20 Day Stranger: Imagine watching a stranger's life on the other side of the world, from the palm of your hand. A new app will soon allow many to do just that.
Researchers from MIT collaborated with The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values to create an iPhone app with name 20 Day Stranger. The app will link two anonymous people, totally unknown to each other for 20 days. Although the idea does not sound so attractive, manufacturers believe in the success of the application.
Using software such as Google Maps and Foursquare, the application, currently under test, collects all the signals of the user's daily life environment. For example, if you were in a taxi and made a route, the app will show the route to the person you are connected to. Will show close-ups of shop window displays, or that there is another interest in the route from Google Streetview to give the other person a sense of your environment.
“It's not really about communication. It's an opening of a window into someone else's life," says Kevin Slavin, director of the MIT Media Lab's Playful Systems research group, in Huffington Post.
The application 20 Day Stranger she is completely anonymous, meaning the two strangers will never know her ID card of the other throughout the 20 days. Anonymity, however, can have its effects: People using the app can show a side or a part of themselves that they don't normally reveal in real life.
"Many people, when they have the opportunity to speak completely anonymously, use it to say things they usually do not say, because there is no accountability," says Slavin.
The creators of the app decided not to allow instant messaging. However, at the end of the 20 days period, the two unknown users have the opportunity to send a message. It could be the contact information to stay in touch, or just a farewell.
"The main thing is that there is nothing you can do to communicate with the stranger other than live your life," Slavin said.
Slavin predicts that 20 Day Stranger will be released from the App Store in about two to three months. At this time, you can sign up for a test on the official application website 20daystranger.com.
