The Effects of Reality Mining on Humans
Reality mining is a term which describes how data is sourced based on the social interactions of individuals. This data is mined via devices that we consider ordinary and necessary to communicate with one another, including cell phones and social networking platforms. As a means of analyzing human behavior, reality mining can also affect behavior by predetermining human action as a means of marketing or advertising to the individual.-
Reality Mining as Information
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Reality mining concerns how our lives can be mapped as information. Human interaction can be analyzed through data which collects an individual's activity, location and proximity to others. It reveals how our individual actions are connected to those closest to us in friend or kinship, and how they influence others in making decisions.
Behavior Modeling
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Reality mining suggests that human beings live their lives in relatively predictable patterns, or routines, which dictate our actions everyday. This information can be invaluable to marketers, sociologists, psychologists and advertisers as a comprehensive analysis of an individual's actions and desires.
Influencing Behavior
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When this information is used to convince the individual to consume a product, reality mining can be seen as influencing human behavior. It means that our private lives are broadcast as information to sell us products we never needed or were aware of, strictly because of how effectively our lives are mapped via the patterns of routine we establish in defining ourselves as individuals.
Preventing Pandemics
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Reality mining is useful in tracking how certain diseases or pathogens spread regionally, and in some cases globally. Social scientists use this information to prevent global epidemics such as SARS, by revealing the complexity of how they spread via human interaction. In making the possibility of infection into a set of data, we can more readily predict how these diseases happen and where they came from, thus protecting the world's population from global pandemics.
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