20 Day Stranger: Imagine keeping a close eye on the life of a stranger 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 have teamed up with The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values to create an iPhone app called 20 Day Stranger. The app will connect two anonymous people, complete strangers, for 20 days. While the idea may not sound like much, the developers are confident in the app's success.
Using software like Google Maps and Foursquare, the app, which is currently in testing, collects all the signals from the user's daily life environment. For example, if you were in a taxi and took a ride, the app would show the route to the person you're connected with. It would show close-ups of storefronts, or other points of interest along the route from Google Streetview to give the other person a sense of your surroundings.
"It's not really about communication. It's about opening a window into someone else's life," Kevin Slavin, director of the MIT Media Lab's Playful Systems research group, told the Huffington Post.
The 20 Day Stranger app is completely anonymous, meaning the two strangers will never learn each other's identities throughout the 20 days. However, anonymity can have its downsides: People using the app may show off a side or part of themselves that they wouldn't normally reveal in real life.
“A lot of people, when they have the opportunity to speak completely anonymously, use it to say things they wouldn’t normally say, because there’s no accountability,” Slavin says.
The app's creators decided not to allow direct messaging. However, at the end of the 20-day period, the two unknown users have the opportunity to send a message. It could be contact information to stay in touch, or just a goodbye.
“The main thing is that there’s nothing you can do to communicate with the stranger, except live your life,” Slavin said.
Slavin predicts that the 20 Day Stranger app will be released on the App Store in about two to three months. For now, you can sign up for a trial on the app’s official website, 20daystranger.com.
