Can Serendipity Be Planned?
According to a forecast by the International Data Corp., nearly 80% of all mobile phones will have Bluetooth capability by 2006. If that prediction holds true, applications like Serendipity would have the potential to dramatically transform the ways in which people meet and connect with each other. As technologies converge, new cellular phones can identify each other with Bluetooth and can recreate the functionality of the Lovegety by leveraging the information already stored in existing online profiles. For that to happen, though, researchers need to address a number of privacy concerns. Specifically, many people might prefer eating their meals or riding an elevator in the silence of their own thoughts, and they could easily take offense at having their movements tracked by a Big Brother-like system. Obviously, an application like Serendipity introduces a significant number of privacy concerns that must be addressed. In the research project at the Media Lab, all subjects will have giv
