MIT’s Technology Review just published it’s list of 10 Emerging Technologies for 2008. The one piece that resonated with me is Sandy Pentland’s exploration into Reality Mining especially in relation to social networking, new media and interactive.

Reality mining “is all about paying attention to patterns in life and using that information to help [with] things like setting privacy patterns, sharing things with people, notifying people–basically, to help you live your life.”

This becomes a hot topic for a few reasons. First and foremost is, once again, privacy issues. Data capture is part of our daily lives – credit card usage, cookies on sites, social network profiles, company swipe cards – and as technology continues to slowly infiltrate more of our lives, we become more tolerant and accepting of what information is divulged and distributed. Everyone has see the movies with the FBI trying to trace the criminals phone call with the criminal hanging up just before being caught. However, most people don’t think about that even with mobile phones being on all the time A simple Google search on his/her name would surprise a lot of people.

Reality Mining has been a reality for years. And as mobile phones become more prevalent with WI-FI, Bluetooth and GPS-type systems (ala iPhone,) in addition to the laptops we carry around and use, the continual social network is our daily life. And as mobile technology advances, our blip on the grid becomes more prominent. The Human Cyborg ideal continues to press forward. Professor Kevin Warwick first started research into this in 1998 by planting microchips in his arm for recognition of systems in his lab.

The major benefit of Reality Mining is from an anthropological standpoint. How people interact, where they are and when they are. Tying this information into disease outbreaks, advertising models (when a person sees an ad, what do they do right afterwards?) and general healthcare and “human maintenance.” Smartex in Italy is working on clothing that does just that.

It’s a bit of the God factor (being omnipotent and omniscient) that is also fascinating. Knowing where your friends are at any time, knowing what they’re doing, where to get the food your phone knows your craving. It’s bringing the idea of Facebook, Google Maps, Dodgeball and other sites into the physical space. The ultimate social network. Maybe even a step closer to SkyNet.

Real-time in real-time. Very meta.

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For those of you not familiar with the not-for-profit OpenID, here’s a simple explanation, courtesy of the official website:

OpenID eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience.

You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.

For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login.

For geeks, OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity. OpenID takes advantage of already existing internet technology (URI, HTTP, SSL, Diffie-Hellman) and realizes that people are already creating identities for themselves whether it be at their blog, photostream, profile page, etc. With OpenID you can easily transform one of these existing URIs into an account which can be used at sites which support OpenID logins.

Think of OpenID has a master key that gets you into any door on the web you have permission to open.

You may not have heard much about it yet, because in order for it to work the way it should, it needs mainstream support from publishers. Well, that’s starting to happen.

In the last few months/weeks, OpenID became supported by AOL (which means anyone with an AOL screenname has one) and now, by Blogger, which is owned by Google. Yahoo! also just hoined the bandwagon, giving another 250 million user IDs corresponding OpenIDs.

So access is being granted, and millions of people will now have a key that can unlock the door to nearly every publisher, nearly every online service they might use.

But here’s the problem…

Have you ever been cleaning out, say, a kitchen drawer and found a lone, solitary key, and wondered what lock it was for? It was important enough to keep, but you can’t use it unless you know what it’s supposed to open. That’s the problem with OpenID. Millions have it, but barely anybody knows what its for.

My recommendation? Bring the partners together. Have them donate a percentage of ad inventory per quarter to educate consumers on why this is important, and what the advantages of OpenID are. Launch a campaign designed to reach and teach. The government does it all the time, whenever they launch a new public service. OpenID and its partners would be wise to follow suit. OpenID providers have a lot to gain from this. The more people they get to use their email address as their OpenID, the longer people will be locked into their service. And the more people use their OpenID, the more dependent they become on it. And the fewer logins you need to remember, the better the user experience will be.

It’s a win-win-win. While publishers are busy integrating, lets start educating. Shall we?

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The summary of this story is simple.

Uber-techblogger Robert Scoble used a new feature of Plaxo to import information from Facebook (like birthdays) into his personal address book. Facebook then banned Scoble for ‘utilizing an automated script’ to access information. The full story is here.

WTF?

There are a few issues at play here.

1) Why would Plaxo launch a service that violates Facebook’s terms of use?

2) Why do Facebook’s terms of use prohibit accessing information?

My thoughts?

1) Plaxo should have known better than to launch an application that could get someone banned from Facebook just by using it. It’s probably an overzealous attempt at becoming more Web 2.0 now that they are for sale.

2) Facebook finds itself in a bit of a quandry here, and now a movement is afoot to free all information on the service, according to open standards. That’s one of the things that Web 3.0 is all about, folks. Open flow of data and information. Kind of ironic that one of the Web 2.0 flagships is putting the kibosh on information sharing isn’t? In Facebook’s defense, I do understand their point. They want to prevent information pirates from pillaging personal information. But it’s out there anyway. Methinks this issue isn’t going away any time soon, and methinks that this may very well have an impact of Facebook’s (and all social networks’) terms of use. There’s already a Facebook group pining for Scoble’s reinstatement.

Stay tuned.

**UPDATE** Facebook has reinstated Scoble. Plaxo’s comments are available here. Thanks Phil!

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