unmediated

Playlists, wireless discovery, and social discovery

Who would have thought that new methods of human socializing would emerge from the combination of digital music playlists and wireless communication between devices? This article about findings presented at the recent Computer-Human Interaction conference offers some tantalizing hints:

(Thanks, Jim!)

Music playlists can reveal intimate aspects of character, even when the listeners alter their lists to portray themselves in certain ways, according to a recent study.

The study also found that sharing digital music, including among people with disparate song tastes, can lead to the formation of strong group identities.

The research adds to the growing body of evidence gathered during the past few years that technology is changing the ways people relate to one another.

The findings were presented at the recent Computer-Human Interaction conference in Portland, Oregon.

One of the high-tech advances analysed in the study is called computer "discovery capabilities".

This allows one technology to discover and connect to another, for example, as Apple's iTunes digital music program can enable a computer to automatically find and connect to iTunes running on other computers.

The same technology allows a laptop to discover internet hotspots in places like coffee shops that are wired for discovery capabilities.

"Right now the research about discovery capabilities is focused on one technology finding another technology, but we wanted to understand what the social impact of discovery might be," says Amy Voida, lead author of the paper and a doctoral candidate at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Via Clippings.reblog