Similar to using reality mining to understand traffic within a city, we can also use reality mining of mobile phone GPS data, call logs, and email records to better understand the ‘traffic’ within an organization. Analysis of these digital traces allows a detailed picture of face-to-face, voice, and digital communication patterns. These patterns, in turn, allow us a new level of insight into the problems of industry and government, including building customer relationships, resource management, transportation, and public health …

… it is possible to use patterns of communication to identify ‘information ghettos’ that have serious social problems. This capability can allow government services to be far more responsive to citizen needs than is possible by using census or survey data …

For society, the hope is that we can use this new in-depth understanding of individual behavior to increase the efficiency and responsiveness of industries and governments. For individuals, the attraction is the possibility of a world where everything is arranged for your convenience—your health checkup is magically scheduled just as you begin to get sick, the bus comes just as you get to the bus stop, and there is never a line of waiting people at city hall …

Perhaps the greatest challenge posed by this new ability to sense the pulse of humanity is creating a ‘new deal’ around questions of privacy and data ownership.

[O]ne day — and I’m not sure when that will be, but it will be one day — all the things we know this week as Google+ will be available for anyone who has a Google Apps for Business account.

Why do I know this?

Because our company pays $50 per employee per year for each of those accounts. And I know that our company would like to have all of the services of Google+ inside our company so that employees can use the awesome video conferencing feature it has. And we’d also like to use features like “Huddle” and Circles that actually seem more logical in a collaborative working relationship than in the pure “hanging out with friends” context.

And Google knows that if we start thinking of Google+ as Hammock+, it won’t be something we’d block our employees from using — the way some companies (not us) block Facebook and Twitter.

With me, part of the way I’ll believe that Google+ is something really different from Facebook, et al, is when I see them do what I don’t see Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter ever doing: Letting me control my own identity — even as they control one network on which I choose to reside.

The purpose of Google+ is to keep you within the Google web (as opposed to having you outside anybody’s web, or in someone else’s web). Where “web” used to mean the spidered collection of documents and files available via HTTP, [it] has grown to mean your Digital Life.

Google’s business is to mediate as much of your Digital Life as it can — similar to the way Microsoft’s business in the old days was to mediate as much of your Digital Office as it could (back in the day when Digital Life and Digital Office were nearly equivalent). The monetization model is completely different, of course; but the more of your Digital Life Google can mediate, the more they can monetize, and the more sticky the whole suite is. Google wants to be as ubiquitous as Microsoft used to feel.

(Google and Microsoft have also had altruistic goals of making the world a better place while running their business, but of course that means they have to be successful at business to be successful in their altruistic goals.)

Google has been pretty good at understanding how far Digital Life will reach into Real Life. Want to find out where you are physically and where you’re going? There’s a Google (Maps) for that. Want to watch millions of channels of video? There’s a Google (YouTube) for that. Want to talk to your friends, family and business associates on the phone? There’s a Google (Android, Voice) for that. Etc.