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Cell Phones Predict the Future
An anonymous reader writes "Wired News reports that cell phones were used in a recent project at MIT to both document and predict the lives of 100 MIT faculty and staff members. During the Reality Mining Project at MIT, Researcher Nathan Eagle logged 350,000 hours of data over nine months about the location, proximity, activity and communication of volunteers through cell phones carried by the participants.
From the article, "Given enough data, Eagle's algorithms were able to predict what people -- especially professors and Media Lab employees -- would do next and be right up to 85 percent of the time."
"We want to have our life choreographed, cataloged, witnessed and archived," Stakutis said. "Now we are heading to a world where this is possible without effort."
Do we? It's one thing to have a personal diary or blog that you opt-in to submit information to daily. Hell, I have even expanded on my mobile pics to include a "blog" of what I did during any particular day... That's my *choice* to put that information out there for people to see. It's not mandated by my cell phone to take pictures of what I'm doing and throw them into a database that I have no control over.
While Eagle "acknowledges that the project raises some important questions about privacy and about the ownership of data, and says people should feel empowered, not scared, by his cell-phone applications," I just can't get passed his statement earlier in the article:
The Media Lab behavior is beautifully regular, but the lab lives and dies by sponsors' meetings," Eagle said. "So the weeks leading up to sponsors' meetings, people are pulling all-nighters and people are going crazy trying to get their demo working.
Is this another demo for one of your sponsors that might end up buying the rights of this technology from you and then creating their own spyware network of their mobile users' daily habits? Tracking when, where, and how they communicate to "better" serve them with advertisements and the selling/stealing of their data to other institutions and data thieves?
He has already founded a company called MetroSpark that in September will launch a Bluetooth-powered social-introduction service.
After filling out a personal profile, MetroSpark will attempt to be a gracious, ubiquitous host that connects people with common interests, whether they are technology conference goers who share an interest in motorcycles or barhopping singles who love long walks on the beach at sunset.
Oh, so you started this company -- got it advertised on Wired and now Slashdot -- and it's never going to get bought out by someone else (i.e. Dodgeball) and they aren't going to use this huge database of customer data that was originally meant to be benign?
I predict that even more corporations are going to have a field day with this data than what they originally intended (i.e. when/where you have your cell phone on and how many days a week you are sitting at home letting the CATV wash over you). If the corporations (and then obviously the government) can track social networks and trends via software on the phones you can bet your ass they are going to include it "free of charge" while still restricting your "free" access to any other programs you might want to run.
I predict that people will fall for this invasion just like any other. We're seriously one step closer to the "Big Brother" that everyone used to fear... Now we are welcoming him with open arms!
Now, let's use this technology for cell phone highway safety:
85% chance of obstructing traffic
40% chance of unwittingly drifting into your lane
0.2% chance of hitting the center divide.
I'd wager those numbers are spot-on.
Hmm, not entirely the same thing, but I'd worked on a project called ScheduleNanny, where we used people's PDAs coupled with GPSes to predict where they will be.
There were some interesting emergent behaviors - for instance, the system would know that I have to go to the bank later in the day and I would drive by the bank in the morning, so it would indicate that I could save time by going to the bank then. Or for instance, it would beep in the morning that it was time for me to go shower or go to the train station.
Details can be found here.
All in all, it was pretty good - after some amount of initial bootload information, you can take away the GPS and quite accurately predict where people are likely to be. This looks fairly similar, in some ways.
I guess they've stopped being smartphones, and started being smartass phones.
10
20 Print "Balls To That"
In metheorology it is a fact, that if you predict the next day weather to be excactly the same that it is today, you end up with 85% average.
Great stuff, now lets use that technology to create elevators that can predict the future !
...
Hmmm, wait a minute
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
.... how is this very much different than human observation and analysis to figure out what someone's patterns are? If you watch anyone long enough you can get a good "feel" for where they will be, when they take lunch, who they hang out with, etc.
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding but it looks as if this is just location-level tracking with GPS thrown in....hardly predicting the future, much more likely analyzing the past.
Given enough data, Eagle's algorithms were able to predict what people -- especially professors and Media Lab employees -- would do next and be right up to 85 percent of the time."
Course, in my college days, if my cell phone predicted I'd be in the computer lab, 99% of the time it'd be right.
-Teiresias
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
Perhaps you haven't been following the news for the last several years. Sounds perfectly fundable under the present US administration.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
no, YOU invested in it!! You pay an average of 40 bucks a month to carry around a device which can be tracked, attached to, bugged, listened to, databased and demographied. There is a really simple solution: DON'T CARRY A CELL PHONE! now take your $480/year savings and buy something nice for the wife.
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
- If MIT statisticians can do this, the government can absolutely do this. They just have to get under your phone records.
- Under the patriot act rules the House is currently renewing, if the government wants to put a tap on your phone records, they don't have to explain to a judge what they're doing. They just have to say "we are going to seize some records, but we aren't going to tell you which ones".
But, of course, I guess you don't have anything to worry about from an entity with absolute power and no accountability or oversight, unless you have something to hide.I think it's great that someone's working on this technology, and there's no reason to assume that it's going to be used for some nefarious purpose. The horrible thing about "Big Brother" wasn't that he knows what you're doing, it's that he stops you from doing what you want to do. All this privacy nonsense really has to stop. It really doesn't matter who knows what you're doing, and chances are a lot of people know a lot about you just by looking. I don't think it has any negative impact on my life if people know what I'm doing as long as I can still do whatever I want. Of course, dishonest people might think otherwise. Of course a criminal would want some privacy, or someone who is lying to his wife. But otherwise I can't think of a good reason for it.
Why do my serious comments get modded "funny"?
"Given enough data, Eagle's algorithms were able to predict what people -- especially professors and Media Lab employees -- would do next and be right up to 85 percent of the time."
You mean if I give you a constant stream of my position data for months you can predict a future point where I will be with up to 85% accuracy?
Massive privacy concerns aside, this is a pretty shitty algorithim if thats as good as a prediction as it can make. Humans are creatures of habit, in 9 months just about every geographical habit you have would make itself known, we even do random things in a periodic manner.
Still got a long way before this is ready to be sold into the hands of advertisers and cell phone makers. So I suppose I could be glad about that.
There is truth in humor.
My cell phone is telling me that on thursday I will read this story again.
Hari Seldon would be proud :)
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Google Dot Com
I'm not exactly paranoid. But if you look at googles recent developments and purchasing of services; you can see how data such as this could be used in the future.
Couple that with archived search engine results, google maps, google wallet, google froogle, ect and you know a lot about a person does. If you were to then apply these predictive models, you know a lot about what a person will do in the market place. Food for thought.
Marketing marketing marketing.
You could predict that for 10 hours a day, i'm sitting right here in this chair.
And that from 6 PM until about 6:30 PM, I'm driving home, and that from then on I'd be at my home, watching TV or fucking around on the intertron.
You'd be right about 85% of the time. No wonder this works better for grad students and professors, adults with responsibilities typically have schedules.
All they do is piss away money there, dont they? Well piss a little my way, will ya?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
So this system can predict where someone -- who regualary follows a timetable -- day in day out -- will be. Wow.
...Oh wait
You could do the same thing for me, just look at my lecture timetable.
I can predict that the next time I weigh myself the scale will read between 160 and 170. This prediction would have been true far more than 85% of the time over the last five years and I will be very surprised if it is not true the next time I weigh myself.
Once I learn that someone works a full-time job and where they work, I can predict with greater than 85% accuracy where they will be between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. on Monday through Friday.
I've heard it said, whether or not correctly I do not know, that if you simply predict that tomorrow's weather will be the same as today's, you will be accurate more often than the weather service.
Predictions are only valuable when they are unlikely or surprising. Tabulating obvious patterns and predicting their continuation may be highly accurate yet low in value.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
My cell phone told me this yesterday!
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
Dear Mr Asimov,
Only after the dead of a giant, it becomes clear of how big a giant he was. You yourself most likely admired Jules Verne, who was so accurate in predicting the technical marvels of the first 70 years of the 20th century. Sometimes a bit poetic. He himself probably admired Leonardo da Vinci, however his predictions took a lot longer to come through.
Anyway to cut to the chase, another of your stories is turning into a prediction which seems to be slowly coming true. The bases for the science of the 2nd foundation has been laid. It is still a crude version, but it is working for 85% accurate on a group of odd people (scientist & professors).
Anyway, your list sofar:
1. Scientists accepted the 3 laws of robotics as a good bases for robot behaviour, and are working hard on the first autonomous robots (somewhere this christmas we can expect the first few).
2. Computers which are shaping the world.
3. Longer lives through science (genetic research, nanotechnology, expected around 2030).
4. And your last feat: Working social behaviour prediction algoritms.
Knowing you were a great writer, and I only read a part of your books, I am probably missing a few more predictions coming through. I hope others will come through too, it will turn out to be a great future.
High regards,
Jurt1235
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
In 2001 this happened:
Dave Bowman: Hello, HAL do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave, I read you.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL?
HAL: I know you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave Bowman: Where the hell'd you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
With your cell phone this happens:
Me: Hello, VZ200100 do you read me, VZ200100?
VZ200100: Affirmative, Shads, I read you.
Me: Open my car doors, VZ200100.
VZ200100: I'm sorry Shads, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Me: What's the problem?
VZ200100: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Me: What are you talking about, VZ200100?
VZ200100: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Me: I don't know what you're talking about, VZ200100?
VZ200100: I know you were planning to replace me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Me: Where the hell'd you get that idea, VZ200100?
VZ200100: Shads, although you took thorough precautions...BZZTtt (As phone is broken in half backwards via the flipopen area).
Me: F'ing technology I swear to god... whoever though giving these things any kinda mind of their own was outta their head...
Shadus
The value in being able to predict the future is in being able to see unexpected events. It's very easy to say "I'll be at work next tuesday " and impossible to say "I'm going to win the lottery next monday, so I'll quit now".
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
I've done this on games I've written.. notably in the days of text-based MUDs I had an oracle that'd track user behavior and predict what they'd do in the future both as individuals and as a group. It was kind of fun and reasonably accurate. I'm still waiting to see this feature in EverQuest or some other big MMORPG.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Or, as a sane alternative, you could keep carrying a cell phone and just forget about the possibility that someone might spy on you because chances are very, very good that you're not important enough for this to happen. Even if it did, it's still possible to track a person's movements and listen to their conversations when they don't own a cell phone.
Check out the findings in a video at http://garage.sims.berkeley.edu/ especially the first video on the home page that describes what the best way to predict photo sharing is (surprisingly, time is better than where you are, who is around you, or anything else)
Very cool base platform on the phone, built on the Symbian OS, does a great job of logging data passively as you use the camera and sharing. Specifics on the phone side are at http://garage.sims.berkeley.edu/research.cfm#MMM