Reality mining – discovering common sense

This weekend’s article in the NY Times about “reality mining” – analyzing data based on people’s actual physical movements through an increasing array of wireless devices and chips – reminds me of the power of common sense. While super concerned about the privacy implications of increasingly intrusive tracking and data mining, I’m always curious about what is actually being learned. In this case, the NY Times states:

“The Media Lab researchers have worked with Hitachi Data Systems, the Japanese technology company, to use some of the lab’s technologies to improve businesses’ efficiency. For example, by equipping employees with sensor badges… the researchers determined that face-to-face communication was far more important to an organization’s work than was generally believed. Productivity improved 30 percent with an incremental increase in face-to-face communication.”

As someone who has been known to text or email people in the same office, it gave me pause. But then again, who hasn’t had those experiences where 5 emails later, when an issue hasn’t been solved, you pick up the phone or just walk over to a colleague’s cube in the other room and the issue is dealt with in a couple minutes. And, despite my pride at being able to work from anywhere, I’ve made a concerted effort to spend more time in my clients’ offices this year (more face-to-face time) – which has made a huge difference in the quality of experience (both mine and theirs), even though I waste time commuting 20 minutes each way.

Funny, sometimes it just takes MIT researchers with sophisticated new technology to make a discovery that’s published in the NY Times to tell me what my common sense let me know a while back. The good news is that after Thanksgiving, I’m happy to have the excuse to get off my arse for more face-to-face time.