Last month, I read this article in the Washington Post “Beating Traffic by Joining the Network” and it was remarkable to read about the “hive mind” in my local newspaper. I’ve heard of the concept in relation to "collective consciousness" in human behavior studies and the “wisdom of crowds” in economics; but the Washington Post aptly describes a “hive mind” as the "aggregation of what everyone in a group senses individually".
The article describes the testing of direction-finding device created by a California-based company named Dash Navigation; it’s a separate, somewhat large, dash mounted device that has a mapping screen. It uses cell phone networks (not GNSS) to provide coordinates; and it looks like a small television. If you belong to the Dash network, it navigates users around traffic by using the information provided by all the users belonging to the network.
According to the article, one of the most difficult technical challenges is interpreting the huge amounts of data created by the users, I think that regression analysis (perhaps employing See5 or Cubist) could be an effective method for finding patterns.
While Dash Navigation is on the forefront of an emerging technology, I feel the system could evolve from a dashboard box into a gps linked to cell phones via Bluetooth connections.
While this device allows a unique fusion of GIS and software to assist in data collaboration, ironically, it’s in the subscriber’s best interest for the service to remain insular. An optimum popularity likely exists: although there needs to be enough users to provide data, if too many subscribers utilize its assistance, its usefulness will exponentially decrease due to vehicles clogging the alternate routes; leading to more circuitous paths and longer times spent in transit.
Unlike almost every commercial product, "the more the merrier" doesn’t apply to the interests of Dash Navigation’s customers.
Tags: Dash Navigation · GPS · regression analysisNo Comments
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