Next week I will be attending and discussing mobile social media and social networks at the Mobile Web Africa conference in Johannesburg, South Africa. It is my first time to Africa and I am excited to both visit and to discuss how mobile networked devices can change social organizations.  Mobile devices are in many ways more important in emerging and developing regions where the availability of these tools enable the first voice and data services that have ever been affordable and reliable, let alone mobile.  There are vast opportunities in this space, a topic well reviewed in the recent issue of the Economist:

The Mobile Web Africa event will focus on these key questions:

1. How will the industry evolve to a point where the vast majority of people have access to the mobile web and the content they want to view?
2. How will the industry fully exploit existing and future opportunities?
3. How can PC or mobile based developers and start-ups monetise their innovation and creativity to grow in to companies that will drive the expansion of the ecosystem?
4. How can Operators, Original Equipment Manufacturers, global associations and other mobile powerhouses assist their smaller partners?
5. How can societal and economic problems be tackled by the development of the capabilities of the mobile device?
6. What handsets, standards, networks and designs will allow consumers to successfully access the content and consume it?
7. How will the consumer be able to discover that content – through an Application, Browser, Search Engine, Advert, Social Network?

I will focus my discussion on the idea of the “Electrification of the Interaction Order” and topics related to the growing use of sensors on mobile devices and the sharing of the resulting data.  A service like SenseNetworks is a  good example of a mobile data collection, analysis, and presentation service.  Other sites, like Quantified Self, CureTogether, and FitBit, are examples of the social movements, web applications, and devices that are emerging in the self-monitoring medical tracking space.  These communities overlap with the trail based exercise communities of runners, bikers, skaters, hikers, and skiers, some with artistic inclinations.  I see a new wave of devices that are extensively quantify your “self” and “others”, perhaps when people swap sensor data with one another.  The recent work of Nathan Eagle and his co-authors illustrate the possibilities of using many devices with (already existing and widely used) sensors can generate remarkable maps of human behavior.  Much of this data will take the form of social networks as people are linked by “hyperties” – forms of association and connection that are authored by machines from the records of association and behavior.  People will be linked who have never met, in the same way that web book store customers who have never met can be linked by common browse and purchase patterns.  Hyperties will be formed by shared use of location, even if at different times, or patterns created by passing through different spaces at different times but in common patterns (Starbucks, then gas?  Or subway then tea shop?).  The notion of “Tribes” used by the SenseNetworks company is a good example of this approach.    The Economist is all over this topic, with another article “Mobile phones Sensors and sensitivity” that captures the topic.  Jonathan Donner’s work is also a good resource for insights on the role of mobile technology in many parts of the world.  The ability to enable a form of banking service is a particular benefit for the many people who do not have access to banking services.

Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy

Here is the slide deck I presented at the “Studying Society In A Digital World” conference at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University.  They just posted most of the conference slides.  I took some pictures and posted to flickr.  Here is the slide deck I presented along with my talk at the conference.

The theme of mobile sensor data shared via social networks was one reinforced by the many presentations at the conference. In my talk, I focused on the idea that information want not to be free or expensive, rather, information wants to be copied.  Like DNA, the goal of any string of bits is to make a duplicate copy of themselves.  Several technical realities mean that while information may exist on a spectrum from private to public, it only moves in one direction (public) and almost never back.  Once made public on the Internet, even if only for a moment, a photo, document, or other digital object is almost certainly to have been copied, indexed, backed up, or replicated.  All efforts to delete a digital object once widely distributed is like trying to take wine out of water.  This is because all cryptography become brittle over time, most bits end up exposed after they get distributed, and more events trigger widespread distribution of bits than expected (for example, linking a photo, and a location, to a tweet that gets copied to LinkedIn and Facebook, that then appears in an RSS feed and is copied from there to Friend Feed.  As it travels, information looses more of the access controls that initially made it relatively private until it is effectively public.

Held in conjunction with SocialCom ’09
29th-30th August, Vancouver, Canada
http://thesocialmobileweb.org

The mobile space is evolving at an astonishing rate. At present there are over 3.5 billion mobile subscribers worldwide and with continued advances in devices, services and billing models, the mobile web looks set to inspire a new age of anytime, anywhere information access. The inherent characteristics of mobile phones enable new types of interactions, e.g. mobile phones are personal to the individual, they are always on and always connected. And as such we are seeing a shift towards mobile devices for social mediated tasks. The world is also witnessing an explosion in social web services. Online social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace continue to experience huge increases in usage, with more and more users seeking novel ways of interacting with their friends and family.

In this workshop we are interested in the combination of these two exciting research spaces: the social web and the mobile space. We believe that the social mobile web is going to be a highly influential research area in the near future. As such this workshop will investigate the current state of the social mobile web. Topics of interest to this workshop include (but are not limited to) the following:

* Novel social interactions on mobile devices.
* Social mobile content sharing and distribution services.
* Context aware mobile services – beyond location based services.
* Social mobile search and social mobile browsing.
* User evaluations of social mobile services.
* Mobile user interfaces that incorporate social elements.
* Mobility and social networks.
* Models of mobile social behavior and mobile traces.
* Urban gaming, mobile mixed reality, etc.
* Innovative social mobile applications.

This workshop is targeted towards researchers working within the mobile web and social web spaces.  Participants are invited to submit: (1) a short position or demonstration paper of 2-4 pages in length or (2) a full length technical paper of up to 10 pages in length. Papers should be in IEEE publication format and should be submitted as a PDF file via email to organizers@thesocialmobileweb.org. Workshop papers will be published by IEEE CS Press. Note that at least one author of accepted papers needs to register and attend the workshop.

Organising Committee
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* Karen Church, Telefonica Research, Barcelona
* Josep M. Pujol, Telefonica Research, Barcelona
* Barry Smyth, University College Dublin, Ireland
* Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University, Evanston

Program Committee
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* Lada Adamic, University of Michigan
* Alex Arenas, Universitat Rovira i Virgili
* John Breslin, DERI Institute, NUI Galway
* Meeyoung Cha, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems
* Augustin Chaintreau, Thomson Research
* Nathan Eagle, MIT/Santa Fe Institute
* Andreas Flache, University of Groningen
* Jill Freyne, CSIRO
* Scott A. Golder, Cornell University
* Carmen Guerrero, Universidad Carlos III
* Tom Heath, Talis
* Matt Jones, FIT Lab, Swansea University
* David Lazer, Harvard University
* Nuria Oliver, Telefonica Research
* Alex Payne, Twitter
* Ramon Sang¸esa, Technical University of Catalonia, Citilab
* Albrecht Schmidt, University Duisburg-Essen
* Marc Smith, Telligent Systems
* Roger M. Whitaker, University of Cardiff
* Peter Mika, Yahoo Research Labs

Important Dates
11th May 2009: Deadline for submissions
5th June 2009: Notification to authors
15th June 2009: Final paper version deadline
29th-31st August 2009: Conference dates

Website
Further details are available from the workshop website at: http://thesocialmobileweb.org

Goffman did write about telephone conversations as well as the ways broadcasters altered the patterns of spoken interactions in radio transmissions but he died before mobile phones became popular or online Internet social spaces became mainstream.  Several scholars have applied Goffman to social interaction in cyberspace.  There are lots of possible connections: Goffman wrote at length about the ways people “present” their identities to one another as if we were all actors on a stage.  After decades of “reality TV” this is not the revolutionary thought it once was in Goffman’s day.  Today his work can be a guide to studying the ways people now use the Internet to create representations of themselves and interact with one another.  Profiles on social network systems and other kinds of Internet based media publication tools are a new kind of surface for displaying membership insignia and symbols of connections with other people.  Like clothing or landscaping, Internet media are a medium for self-expression and claims to membership in a number of demographics and sub-cultures.

It is no longer necessary to bring Goffman to the Internet; the Internet is coming to Goffman.  Goffman’s work has even more value in the coming years.  The main focus of his work was the minute details of face-to-face interactions.  Goffman relished the details of careful control of eye contact and posture, tone of voice and timing.  When applied to “online” media this aspect of Goffman’s work has been applied metaphorically to the interactions of avatars and user names.  It is certainly possible to extend Goffman into these Internet spaces.  But now Internet spaces are extending themselves into the Interaction Order.

Mobile Internet devices are now along for the ride in many of the situations Goffman wrote about: meetings and encounters between people which feature exchanges and evaluations of identity claims.  Mobile phones are becoming more general purpose networked mobile computers.  Today these devices remain end points of Internet data more than sources.  But increasingly mobile devices have sensors that allow them to measure physical states of their owners and the presence of others in proximity.  When my phone notices your phone and can tell that it is your phone new opportunities emerge for people interacting in the interaction order.

The “interaction order” has been very analog and few innovations have taken place there — with a few notable exceptions.  Speech and body adornment were both big innovations that gave humans a big advantage in the creation of complex societies.  Since those novel practices there have been few things that have dramatically altered the basic nature of human to human interaction in face-to-face situations.  It could be argued that refinements like amphitheaters increase the number of people who can usefully gather in one place and still hear one another.  Similarly, writing and printing altered the interaction order only to the extent that sitting side-by-side with someone looking at the same relatively rare books created a structured interaction space but not new ways of presenting who we are or reading one another’s claims.

Clocks and maps help people get to an interaction at the right time and in the right place, but they do not change the basic capacity to signal between people.  Phones and cell phones create new kinds of spaces for an interaction order – with novel rules, but they do not change face-to-face interaction as much as they pull people out of face-to-face interactions and into a network mediated interactions.

Goffman will have renewed value for those trying to understand the impact of mobile devices because for the first time networked digital machines are aware of social interactions and are able to alter how we interact with each other.  The Interaction Order is “electrified” when we bring devices into our interactions with other people and those devices help us display the right symbols to others and access the right symbols about others.

After a lovely dinner you order a third glass of wine, take a sip and your mobile phone rings.

Its your health insurance company’s computer. You take the call.

“We’re delighted to see you are enjoying yourself this evening!” the cheerful voice synthesis exclaims.

“Please note, however, that you are now at the policy limit for blood alcohol level. To purchase a 24 hour waiver that will allow you to exceed this limit, press 1. A fee of $20 will be charged to your monthly co-payment invoice. To decline waiver coverage, press 2. Please note that if you decline coverage your blood alcohol level must drop under the policy limit within 45 minutes. Continued elevated blood alcohol above your policy limit will constitute breach of your coverage agreement and you may loose all coverage for alcohol related illnesses including injuries received from accidents that may be caused by impairment.”

With a paid-for glass of wine on the table, many people may just go along with the offer (their judgment may already be somewhat impaired).

Real-time health monitoring is an application that is rapidly developing.  Our mobile devices are likely to play a central role in enabling a wide scale real-time continuous monitoring of health related data.  The Quantified Self meet-up is exploring many aspects of this space, but discussion of ways large institutions could use this data has not been a large focus so far.

Medical compliance is a huge issue: most of us do not take prescribed medicines the way we are “supposed to” – skipping doses, doubling up, or quitting a series of medications once symptoms subside.  A real-time assessment of our blood (among other measures) would go a long way to reducing the costs of illness and treatment.  In a world of scarce medical resources, can competitive societies allow their members to be slothful and subsequentially expensive to maintain?

The Intel Health Guide is a good example of this emerging trend, although still in a “desktop” form factor.

Intel Health Guide Device

Other examples can be found in the iPhones app store where health and navigation and travel categories of applications are starting to collide.

The next meeting of the “Quantified Self” group will be held on January 27th, 2009 at the University of California, Berkeley School of Information.

The group focuses on the emerging practice of recording lots of data about your physical state and activity.  Its where life logging meets populations of people grappling with illness or seeking optimal health.  The idea is that close records of our health will reveal connections between behaviors and outcomes, letting us change our behavior or at least detect early when things go wrong.  Others are just interested in detailed record keeping, an extension of detailed blogging or life streaming.  In many cases people are sharing these records with others, sometimes to get social support to meet a goal like running more miles or loosing more pounds.

I find the topic interesting for all these reasons and because the technologies for the “Quantified Self” are also going to be applied to the “Quantified Other” – sensors that record data about your body may ultimately notice that you are near other people.  It is when machines automatically notice when people are near people that I think the “QS” effort will have greatest impact.

Kevin Kelly has been blogging about “QS” on a blog of the same name. This will be the 3rd meeting of Quantified Self people.  I was able to attend the second meeting at the IDEO offices in San Francisco which had a great turn out of people and presentations of projects for assembling personal biographies and recording fleeting thoughts.  Hope to see you at the next meeting!