Ad Hoc Communities

from the smart-pedestrians dept

People joke about the device in Japan that apparently will beep if a member of the opposite sex and similar interests (and the same device) is nearby in a crowd. Now, it seems that a professor is trying to take that idea to it's logical conclusion, when everyone has some sort of wearable wirelessly connected computer that is always making connections with all the people near you to see if there are any interesting connections. Want to sell your car? In addition to listing it on eBay and putting a sign in the window, you could put it in your wearable device as well - and if someone walking by you, happens to be looking for a used car - the system will alert both of you to the possibility. Even better, as you talk to your friends, your iPod will check out their iPod playlists and perhaps suggest songs you would like as well. Since there are clear privacy questions raised by such systems, the folks working on it have also designed in a trust metric, that looks at previous interactions on each side to make sure that your device only talks to trustworthy other devices. While it might be pretty far away, the potential for such a system is pretty powerful (though, I'm sure plenty of big companies would do their best to ruin the experience).