The Mobile Generation: Global Transformations at the Cellular Level

Every year we see a new dimension of the ongoing Digital Revolution, which is enabling an abundance of information to move faster, cheaper, in more intelligible forms, in more directions, and across borders of every kind. The exciting new dimension on which the Aspen Institute focused its 2006 Roundtable on Information Technology was mobility, which is making the Digital Revolution ubiquitous. As of this writing, there are over two billion wireless subscribers worldwide and that number is growing rapidly. People are constantly innovating in the use of mobile technologies to allow them to be more interconnected. Almost a half century ago, Ralph Lee Smith conjured up "The Wired Nation," foretelling a world of interactive communication to and from the home that seems commonplace in developed countries today. Now we have a "Wireless World" of communications potentially connecting two billion people to each other with interactive personal communications devices. Widespead adoption of wireless handsets, the increasing use of wireless internet, and the new, on-the-go content that characterizes the new generation of users are changing behaviors in social, political and economic spheres. The devices are easy to use, pervasive and personal. The affordable cell phone has the potential to break down the barriers of poverty and accessibility previously posed by other communications devices. An entire generation that is dependant on ubiquitous mobile technologies is changing the way it works, plays and thinks. Businesses, governments, educational institutions, religious and other organizations in turn are adapting to reach out to this mobile generation via wireless technologies -- from SMS-enabled vending machines in Finland to tech-savvy priests in India willing to conduct prayers transmitted via cell phones. Cellular devices are providing developing economies with opportunities unlike any others previously available. By opening the lines of communication, previously disenfranchised groups can have access to information relating to markets, economic opportunities, jobs, and weather to name just a few. When poor village farmers from Bangladesh can auction their crops on a craigslist-type service over the mobile phone, or government officials gain instantaneous information on contagious diseases via text message, the miracles of mobile connectivity move us from luxury to necessity. And we are only in the early stages of what the mobile electronic communications will mean for mankind. We are now "The Mobile Generation." Aspen Institute Roundtable on Information Technology. To explore the implications of these phenomena, the Aspen Institute Communications and Society Program convened 27 leaders from business, academia, government and the non-profit sector to engage in three days of dialogue on related topics. Some are experts in information and communications technologies, others are leaders in the broader society affected by these innovations. Together, they examined the profound changes ahead as a result of the convergence of wireless technologies and the Internet. In the following report of the Roundtable meeting held August 1-4, 2006, J. D. Lasica, author of Darknet and co-founder of Ourmedia.org, deftly sets up, contextualizes, and captures the dialogue on the impact of the new mobility on economic models for businesses and governments, social services, economic development, and personal identity

Wearable Computing for Health and Fitness: Exploring the Relationship between Data and Human Behaviour

Health and fitness wearable technology has recently advanced, making it easier for an individual to monitor their behaviours. Previously self generated data interacts with the user to motivate positive behaviour change, but issues arise when relating this to long term mention of wearable devices. Previous studies within this area are discussed. We also consider a new approach where data is used to support instead of motivate, through monitoring and logging to encourage reflection. Based on issues highlighted, we then make recommendations on the direction in which future work could be most beneficial

360 Quantified Self

Wearable devices with a wide range of sensors have contributed to the rise of the Quantified Self movement, where individuals log everything ranging from the number of steps they have taken, to their heart rate, to their sleeping patterns. Sensors do not, however, typically sense the social and ambient environment of the users, such as general life style attributes or information about their social network. This means that the users themselves, and the medical practitioners, privy to the wearable sensor data, only have a narrow view of the individual, limited mainly to certain aspects of their physical condition. In this paper we describe a number of use cases for how social media can be used to complement the check-up data and those from sensors to gain a more holistic view on individuals' health, a perspective we call the 360 Quantified Self. Health-related information can be obtained from sources as diverse as food photo sharing, location check-ins, or profile pictures. Additionally, information from a person's ego network can shed light on the social dimension of wellbeing which is widely acknowledged to be of utmost importance, even though they are currently rarely used for medical diagnosis. We articulate a long-term vision describing the desirable list of technical advances and variety of data to achieve an integrated system encompassing Electronic Health Records (EHR), data from wearable devices, alongside information derived from social media data.Comment: QCRI Technical Repor

Trading Privacy for Promotion? Fourth Amendment Implications of Employers Using Wearable Sensors to Assess Worker Performance

This Article considers the Fourth Amendment implications of a study on a passive monitoring system where employees shared data from wearables, phone applications, and position beacons that provided private information such as weekend phone use, sleep patterns in the bedroom, and emotional states. The study’s authors hope to use the data collected to create a new system for objectively assessing employee performance that will replace the current system which is plagued by the inherent bias of self-reporting and peer-review and which is labor intensive and inefficient. The researchers were able to successfully link the data collected with the quality of worker performance. This technological advance raises the prospect of law enforcement gaining access to sensitive information from employers for use in criminal investigations. This Article analyzes the Fourth Amendment issues raised by police access to this new technology. Although the Supreme Court currently finds government collection of a comprehensive chronicle of a person’s life to constitute a Fourth Amendment search, widespread employee acceptance of mobile sensing could undermine any claim in having a reasonable expectation of privacy in such information. Additionally, employee tolerance of passive monitoring could make employer data available to the government through third party consent. When previously assessing employees’ privacy, the Court demonstrated a willingness to accept the needs of the employer and society as justification for limiting workers’ Fourth Amendment rights. Ultimately, then, Court precedent suggests that passive monitoring could erode Fourth Amendment rights in the long term

Digital Food Marketing to Children and Adolescents: Problematic Practices and Policy Interventions

Examines trends in digital marketing to youth that uses "immersive" techniques, social media, behavioral profiling, location targeting and mobile marketing, and neuroscience methods. Recommends principles for regulating inappropriate advertising to youth

ACUTA Journal of Telecommunications in Higher Education

In This Issue Trend Tracker Future Web APPs: Reinventing the Nature of Higher Education Security ls High Priority at Ohio State Making the Most of Mobile Communications What Do Students Want? lnstitutional Excellence Award Interview President\u27s Message From the Executive Director Q&A from the CI

LEVERAGING PUSHED SELF-TRACKING IN THE HEALTH INSURANCE INDUSTRY: HOW DO INDIVIDUALS PERCEIVE SMART WEARABLES OFFERED BY INSURANCE ORGANIZATION?

Mobile sensor devices such as smart wearables and activity trackers open up new opportunities to be used in the health care sector. Moreover, since the positive effects of wearable technologies on individuals have been examined, and with fitness trackers becoming significance in preventing chronical conditions which are typically caused by the lack of regular physical activity and causing problems in weight gain and obesity, diabetes and/or osteoporosis has led the statutory health insurance companies in different countries to introduce fitness trackers as part of their reward systems. The objective of this study is to empirically examine individual’s overall perception and experience with mobile fit-ness tracker, drivers as well as adoption barriers, with a particular focus on individual attitude and response when these trackers are implemented in novel services offered by professional health insurance companies. Based on 32 qualitative interviews with users, non-users and experts from insurance companies, our study will contribute toward a better understanding of individuals’ smart wearable perception and adoption in the context of health insurance companies

Spartan Daily March 20, 2013

Volume 140, Issue 29https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/1396/thumbnail.jp

Towards Secure, Power-Efficient and Location-Aware Mobile Computing

In the post-PC era, mobile devices will replace desktops and become the main personal computer for many people. People rely on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets for everything in their daily lives. A common requirement for mobile computing is wireless communication. It allows mobile devices to fetch remote resources easily. Unfortunately, the increasing demand of the mobility brings many new wireless management challenges such as security, energy-saving and location-awareness. These challenges have already impeded the advancement of mobile systems. In this dissertation we attempt to discover the guidelines of how to mitigate these problems through three general communication patterns in 802.11 wireless networks. We propose a cross-section of a few interesting and important enhancements to manage wireless connectivity. These enhancements provide useful primitives for the design of next-generation mobile systems in the future.;Specifically, we improve the association mechanism for wireless clients to defend against rogue wireless Access Points (APs) in Wireless LANs (WLANs) and vehicular networks. Real-world prototype systems confirm that our scheme can achieve high accuracy to detect even sophisticated rogue APs under various network conditions. We also develop a power-efficient system to reduce the energy consumption for mobile devices working as software-defined APs. Experimental results show that our system allows the Wi-Fi interface to sleep for up to 88% of the total time in several different applications and reduce the system energy by up to 33%. We achieve this while retaining comparable user experiences. Finally, we design a fine-grained scalable group localization algorithm to enable location-aware wireless communication. Our prototype implemented on commercial smartphones proves that our algorithm can quickly locate a group of mobile devices with centimeter-level accuracy