As a little teaser to our Reality Mining Future Salon next Thursday 25th of March I sent a couple of questions to our presenter MIT professor Sandy Pentland.
Please: RSVP http://bit.ly/amkhve
Attention: Sandy Pentland is flying in that afternoon for the talk and has to take a red-eye out to Atlanta later that evening. We will therefore skip the networking hour and start the presentation right away at 6pm. Better be there on time.
Questions:1) What was the biggest surprise for you that the reality mining research brought out?
It is amazing when you actually measure dollar effects of face-to-face communication on productivity, employee training, customer satisfaction, etc., and it is even more surprising when you realize that the main effect seems to be through learning-by-imitation rather than through `information'. This poses a real challenge for management practice and for distance work in particular.
2) What have you changed in your or your family’s life as a result of your reality mining research?
We now pay much greater attention to learning-by-imitation and the role that social signal play in cementing behaviors. This way of looking at families and children upends a lot of the assumptions on which current public policy is based.
3) To own the recorded data is potentially very powerful. How can we mitigate abuse? Who can watch the watchers? Any chance of people owning their own data?
The idea of privacy is broken, and we need a new deal on data to move forward. I am a strong advocate that people should `own' data that their actions produce, both to protect their interests and to give them the opportunity to derive benefits from such data. I have been working with several international bodies on this problem and see a consensus view emerging around creating information markets that broker such data.
Wow, interesting answers that beg for more questions: Learning by imitation? How do social signal cement behavior? Which public policies need to be revised?
Going to be really interesting.
Future Salon 25th of March 6pm-9pm presentation followed by questions and discussion.
SAP Labs North America, Cafeteria building 1. SAP is located at 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304[ map ]. Free and open to the public. Please spread the word and invite others, but be sure to RSVP http://bit.ly/amkhve so we know how many people to expect.
We will do our best to webcast the event again via Ustream.tv on the Future Salon Channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Future-Salon
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