Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

1. Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies Polychronis Ypodimatopoulos Viral Communications group MIT Media Laboratory CFP Bi-Annual Meeting San Jose January 2008 Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

2. Project goal • Organize the presence, profile and social interaction of humans and objects in physical proximity and make it accessible and useful Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

3. Social Networking • Not really new: “The Network Nation”, S. Hiltz, M. Turoff (Addison-Wesley, 1978, 1993) • Others followed: • USENET • classmates.com • sixdegrees.com • myspace.com • facebook.com • linkedin.com • … Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

4. How social really is Facebook ? • Ypod: 98 friends, 108 total messages Colleague in MOTOROLA friend in Greece 72 friends in MIT: Where is my social interaction?!? friend in UK others: None of people that I interact with on daily basis Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

5. How social really is Facebook ? • Facebook usage maximizes between 9pm-12am and plummets between Friday afternoon and Sunday afternoon • Traffic also increases during summer/winter breaks Is Facebook really a tool for initiating social interaction, or for merely maintaining it? Fraction of messages sent to recipients in the same school in 2005 “Rhythms of social interaction: messaging within a massive online network”, Golder, Wilkinson, Huberman Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

6. Bottom-up approach to Soc. Networking • Primary characteristic of social interaction for vast majority of humans? • Location of participants to most popular social networking tools/platforms? • Examples: • You can find the location of a building in a city, but have no idea on which side its entrance is • You look for people with common interests, but fail to discover those sitting next to you on the train • You live in large apartment building, but have no means of establishing social interaction with neighbors (other than door2door, if you dare) • Two strangers at the airport take separate taxis to go to the same location, etc. Common physical location Virtual location Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

7. Bottom-up approach to Soc. Networking • We build a mesh network of humans and objects in physical proximity • Each entity participates by means of a device that carries a public profile about its owner (human’s interests, location of a door, etc) • The confederation of all profiles in the network yields a new type of data that is specific to the profiles and the location of the entities • We can query this data to draw useful information, discover entities based on their location and help establish social interaction Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

8. Proposed solution: Cerebro • Suppose there is a number of users and/or objects in physical proximity Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

9. Proposed solution: Cerebro • Cerebro discovers the presence of all other entities and offers asymmetric information resolution about the layout of the network (boosts scalability) Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

10. Proposed solution: Cerebro • A profile is stored at each entity and it is accessible throughout the network • We have organized data that was previously unavailable into useful and accessible information Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

11. Proposed solution: Cerebro • Multiple mesh networks tunneled together form a “Parallel Internet” Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

12. Assumptions User carries some WiFi device that is (almost) always on User regularly updates her profile to match her day-to-day needs/mood/interests Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

13. The Result • On the Street • Potential clients are literally declaring products/services they need • Discover your peers, combine your (buying) power • Express any of multiple identities based on different contexts • Communication in emergency situations Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

14. The Result • At Home • Discover neighbors with similar interests, share playlists, integrate into TV set • Integrate into alarm systems and communicate emergency situations to neighbors • At the Workplace • Organize and search for know-how by physical location Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

15. The Challenges Extreme scalability Efficient search for information Reflect users social norms onto the behavior of the device Security Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

16. Progress so far Achieving scalability “on a diet”: Connected 100 nodes in mesh network using a single frame per node, per 10 seconds (15kb/sec in the worst case) Portability: Cerebro runs on x86, OLPC XO, Nokia N800 and ARM-based embedded computers (python) Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

17. Next steps • Introduce a multi-radio device and demonstrate communication symmetry between humans and objects: • Discover some object (your door at office, your car or your scooter) • Express one of your identities (by means of RFID) • Establish communication and exchange profiles: • Get statistics from your home entrance (who’s inside?) • Sync your MP3s with your car/scooter • Customize your car/scooter settings Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies

18. Questions? Parallel Internets and Ultra-Local Economies