I actually heard about this project from Josh Klein at the informal social software meeting we had last semester.
The Jabberwocky Project is a J2ME app for your cell phone. It’s intended to give you a different view of the urban atmosphere. The idea is that you can “digitally tag” parts of your urban environment with little electronic devices called iMotes (which haven’t actually been released yet), and your phone will also sniff out other people with Bluetooth phones that you come across (whether or not they’ve also installed Jabberwocky). Over time the Jabberwocky app builds a digital map of what they have termed “Familiar Strangers.” Familiar Strangers are people you see every day but that you ignore (i.e., someone at your subway stop).
It’s unclear to me what happens after that, and what the point of it all is, and especially what the point of the iMotes is, but as the creators acknowledge, it’s a work in progress. The ramifications of this are what interest me. I’d especially want to see software like this used to break the ice with the familiar strangers.
