A fascinating story about a new Intel initiative in The Feature:
based on the research of a brilliant Yale psychologist named Stanley Milgram, who died in 1984. One of the many remarkable ideas Milgram came up with was that of the “familiar stranger.” These are people that you see in public on a regular basis, but do not talk to or otherwise communicate with, at least not in any normal sense.
“This is an actual, real relationship, where you mutually agree to ignore each other, without any implications of hostility,” says Eric Paulos, the scientist at Intel Research who is spearheading the project. “There are studies that show if you are standing at a bus stop and you want to know what time it is, you’re more likely to ask a total stranger rather than a familiar stranger, because once you ask that stranger, then you’ve kind of got a different relationship with them — what’s going to happen tomorrow and the next day?”
Milgram believed that familiar strangers were like navigational landmarks. “They kind of blended into the city environment,” says Paulos. “The ebb and flow of cities give rise to this phenomenon.”
Paulos said he wanted to further Milgram’s early-70s work on familiar strangers by using mobile technology. “What make certain places feel the way they do, and why?” He wanted to know “Clearly it is the people you share the space with that influences the way you feel about it. It’s often friends and colleagues, but in urban settings it’s largely dominated by people that you don’t know – familiar strangers.”
So theyÌve come up with a downloadable Bluetooth application (which works on any Bluetooth phone). This analyses other Bluetooth phones in the vicinity (they donÌt have to be running the app). If itÌs seen it before, your app notes that itÌs a familiar stranger and the more it sees them, the more familiar they are and this is also noted and analysed.
The objectives seem largely academic at the moment. For instance, if you want to go somewhere really different in your home city, you go where there are no familiar strangers around you. But wouldnÌt you’d kinda know that?
I do think itÌs interesting though. Not the least that Bluetooth has the potential to be one of those disruptive technologies, like÷.SMS. Kids are already sharing stuff (mainly pics and ringtones) via Bluetooth. In fact, IÌve noted before the new phenomenon of Courier Messaging. This is where party A wants to send something to Party B. But A knows sheÌs not going to see B for a while, so she sends it via Bluetooth to C. C passes it to B, even though C has no interest in the content Ò heÌs just doing his two friends a favour.
Why is this important? WhereÌs the revenue? Oops!
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