Comm.unity Platform

"Comm.unity" is a new communications platform being developed at the MIT Media Lab which combines knowledge, awareness and learning of the user's social relationships and integrates this information into the communication protocols and network services. Comm.unity allows developers to easily create socially aware peer-peer applications for face to face interactions. It runs on a variety of devices through a range of network protocols [source].

Here are some of the possible scenerios they describe:

Imagine going on a trip and creating an ad-hoc group with the people you happen to be traveling with. Any picture anyone takes could be immediately distributed to all of the group's devices. Imagine being able to chat with strangers on the plane, or a friend sitting ten rows in front of you in a lecture hall. Imagine taking the subway and getting the digital version of the Metro paper as you walk by the T-stop. Then, share music and files with strangers sitting next to you in the subway car.

And how about getting notified when your friends and family are nearby?

How about a communication system for emergencies and disaster scenarios, which allows news and critical information to be distributed among people in the area without the need for existing infrastructure (which is likely to be down...)?

Projects like this are always interesting in the way they make us think about how technology can affect social relationships. How technology can help bridge that usual discomfort with communicating with strangers in a group. And how information can be distributed within a group.

The following is Media Lab "LabCAST" which introduces the project:

The Comm.unity platform enables mobile devices to discover and communicate with each other in close proximity. It also transforms these devices into social sensors, and allows programmers to rapidly develop locally and socially aware applications. Several use cases demonstrate key concepts of Comm.unity.

Ultimately my experience with the experimental or even commercial cousins to ideas like this always faces the disappointment of scale. They are interesting to use and exciting in their possibilities but if you are the only one using it then what's the point? In three years of near constant use of plazes, a recent Nokia purchase, I think I had only seen two different users at any given time using the service in a neighborhood I was visiting.

That doesn't mean we can't get excited about the possibilities.

Comm.unity Project Page
The LabCAST

Comm.unity Platform

"Comm.unity" is a new communications platform being developed at the MIT Media Lab which combines knowledge, awareness and learning of the user's social relationships and integrates this information into the communication protocols and network services. Comm.unity allows developers to easily create socially aware peer-peer applications for face to face interactions. It runs on a variety of devices through a range of network protocols [source]. Here are some of the possible scenerios they describe:

Imagine going on a trip and creating an ad-hoc group with the people you happen to be traveling with. Any picture anyone takes could be immediately distributed to all of the group's devices. Imagine being able to chat with strangers on the plane, or a friend sitting ten rows in front of you in a lecture hall. Imagine taking the subway and getting the digital version of the Metro paper as you walk by the T-stop. Then, share music and files with strangers sitting next to you in the subway car. And how about getting notified when your friends and family are nearby? How about a communication system for emergencies and disaster scenarios, which allows news and critical information to be distributed among people in the area without the need for existing infrastructure (which is likely to be down...)?