About the Comm.unity Platform

• 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.
   
• If you are worried about getting spam and viruses from strangers, you could use information about who you know and trust to filter out unwanted peers.
   
• Imagine having “virtual spaces” that you can easily create and share content with different groups in your life – friends, family, classmates, co-workers, or whatever you choose.
   
• And how about getting notified when your friends and family are nearby?

Back up. Think Global:

• 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...)?
   
• Or perhaps a system for professional or civic journalists operating under oppressive regimes?
   

Now imagine doing all of this for free, no service charges, over an open platform that would allow any developer to enhance and add new features and applications.

“Comm.unity” is a new communications platform being developed at the MIT Media Lab that would allow developers to easily create socially aware peer-to-peer applications for face-to-face interactions. Comm.unity runs on mobile phones, PDAs, and regular old laptops and PCs, allowing them to easily communicate with each other and build networks of interactions for their users without the need for any centralized servers, coordination, or administration.

Comm.unity is a new platform implementing a wireless, device-to-device information system that bypasses the need for any centralized servers, coordination, or administration. A key feature of this platform is the fact that it combines knowledge, awareness and learning of the user's social relationships and integrates this information into the communication protocols and network services. Comm.unity is designed to make it work on as many devices as possible, and with as many different radios as possible (WiFi, Bluetooth, IR, etc.). It is designed as a platform over which many different networked applications could be developed with ease. SnapN’Share and additional applications in development are intended to be used in upcoming field studies to collect information about user behavior and their social interactions, and aid in fine tuning the platform’s learning capabilities.
 

• Features
  • Distributed, Self-Organizing Architecture - No central control necessary
  • Device-to-Device Communications
    - Does not depend on existing infrastructure: Would work in basements or at the north pole
    - Potentially Free: No service fees necessary
  • Social Awareness and Learning
    - Uses mobile devices as sensors
    - Uses AI and "Reality Mining" Techniques
    - Integrates with network protocols and services.
  • Privacy Oriented - Private data and logs remain in user’s domain.
  • "Social Dashboard" Interface - Socially-oriented interface or interacting with peers and the system's AI.
  • Device and O/S Independent - Aiming for "Anything wireless that runs Python"
  • Delay-Tolerance - Incomplete transfers resume when content is available again.
  • Core engine is developed in Python.
  • User interfaces for applications are based on GTK (initial version) and mostly Flash.
  • In Development (Partial List)
    - Secure communications
    - Integrate with existing network infrastructure
    - Symbian S60 and additional ports.
     
• Modules / Component Stack:

• Social Dashboard Interface samples (press to enlarge):
  Peers are arranged according to "social distance" and trust parameters. The interface aims to provide an intuitive way for the users to interact with their peers as well as with the system's AI.
  
     
   

• Comm.connect:
  Ideas and applications that are largely based on the Comm.unity platform for developing as well as developed countries. The following 3.5 minute video was part of a seminar focused on Costa-Rica, and illustrates the potential of the platform. If the movie fails to load please try this alternative link.
  
   

(With Jamie Zigelbaum (Media Lab), Ajit Dansingani (Sloan School of Management), and Chantrelle Nielsen (Sloan School of Management)).