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What if you
could see yourself as others see you? What if you could have a “gods eye” view of how the people in your social
network interact? Or `see’ the rhythms of interaction for everyone in
your town? Or even the entire country? Reality Mining, described by MIT's
Technology Review magazine (2/08) as `a technology poised to change the
world,' is beginning to make this possible.
The science behind reality mining is that subtle patterns in how we
interact with other people reveal our attitudes toward them. These
biologically based “honest signaling” mechanisms, including a
person’s activity level and how the timing of their actions is
influenced by others, offer an unmatched window into our social life,
intentions, and health. By understanding these subtle patterns we can
better understand ourselves, and begin to engineer our society to be a
happier, more human place to live, as described in my forthcoming book
`Honest Signals,' published by MIT Press.
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Professor Alex (“Sandy”)
Pentland is a pioneer in organizational engineering, mobile information
systems, and computational social science. Sandy's focus is the development of
human-centered technology, and the creation of ventures that take this
technology into the real world.
He directs the Digital Life Consortium,
a group of more than twenty multinational corporations exploring new ways
to innovate, and oversees the Next
Billion Network, established to support aspiring entrepreneurs in
emerging markets, and the EPROM entrepreneurship
program in Africa. In 1997, Newsweek magazine named him one of the 100
Americans likely to shape this century.
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RESEARCH GROUP
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