Instructor: Alex (Sandy)
Pentland
TAs: Joost
Bonsen, Rich DeVaul, Nathan Eagle, Mike Sung
Summary Description Digital Anthropology[1]
is a Spring 2003 applied social science and media arts seminar surveying the blossoming
arena of digital-artifact enabled experimental sociology/anthropology. We will emphasize both (a) Technology
Testbeds systematically deploying research lab prototypes and
corporate pre-production products in a sample human organizational population
and carefully observing the social consequences, and (b) Sociometrics
using digital artifacts to better observe and measure the complex social
reality of interesting human systems.
Technology
Testbeds
result when multiple labs at MIT & a variety of corporate sponsors showcase
their advanced prototypes and pre-production models at MIT Sloan,
MIT-generally, in our surrounding Kendall community, and even at sponsor
homesites while we closely track their social impact, observe real usage
patterns over time, and systematically assess future market potential.
Sociometrics are the data &
corresponding statistical analysis of social phenomena. Such metrics result from the systematic
deployment of and observation via minimally intrusive digital artifacts
which capture relevant and complex social interaction data over time.
The
Zauri Initiative
Registered students in the seminar will receive a Zaurus mobile Linux PDA[2]
for the duration of the semester. This will
be our common platform for application development and trial experiments.
Expected
Student Deliverables All students are expected to: (a) participate in the exploratory phase of the
Reality Mining project[3],
(b) form teams to build novel experimental tools/artifacts and/or applications,
(c) run at least one rigorous experiment, and (d) write a summary project
report. We hope this class effort will
be the basis for future research and/or publications.
Credits: 9 (2-4-3)
Target
Student Population: We expect between 10 and 20
MAS, EE, and Sloan students.
Registration will be limited by hardware and resource availability
We
will review live & historical research projects from within & beyond
MIT all in the emerging Digital Anthropology arena:
-
Reality Mining
-
MemeTag
http://web.media.mit.edu/~fredm/projects/memetag/
-
Shortcuts
http://web.media.mit.edu/~tanzeem/projects.htm
& http://www.media.mit.edu/~tanzeem/shortcuts/workingpaper.pdf
- Spotme
@ DAVOS
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,369173,00.html
-
MIT Technology Testbed presentation
http://web.media.mit.edu/~jpbonsen/MIT-Technology-Testbeds.ppt
-
MIT Project Mercury proposal -- advocating a Wireless Project Athena, a
specific Tech Testbed effort:
http://web.media.mit.edu/~jpbonsen/MIT-Project-Mercury.htm
-
Wearable & Mobile Computing links
http://kb.hitl.washington.edu/kb/wearable.html