December 9, 2010, 2:10 pm
The Phone Call as Community
By Henry Woodbury
If we define a community by evidence of social interaction, how well do political and historical boundaries hold up? That question is posed, and answered (in part) by a study of landline phone calls in Great Britain led by Professor Carlo Ratti of MIT’s SENSEable City Lab. Analysis of over 12 billion calls identified point-to-point geographical connections (defined at the sub-regional level to protect individual identity) whose relative strength was derived by the frequency and length of calls. The result is a map that mostly aligns to familiar regions, but with some unexpected variations.
Comments
That looks very interesting. Do we have demographics on these new regions? Do people share the same attributes (urban/rural, lower/higher education, etc.) that would confirm this theory?
Also, was there any difference made between private phone calls and professional phone calls?
Good job …
Posted by Julien on December 14, 2010 at 4:51 pm