MIT Students Demonstrate the Power of Android

Posted by Joshua S. Hill

May 14, 2008

The second half of this year is going to bring with it one of the most highly anticipated technology releases, paralleling last year’s release of the Apple iPhone. Google, the internet search and advertising giant, will be releasing its Android operating system for mobile phones.

Google is billing Android as “a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications.” Some may call it Google’s answer to the iPhone, and for a long time it was already billed as “the iPhone killer,” long before the software development kit was released.

The Android is going to be a very open platform, where anyone can affect changes. Whereas before, wireless companies had a large amount of control over the phone and its software, with the introduction of Apple’s iPhone, things have been shook up: Google plan to take that a lot further with Android.

Android’s openness has been put through the wringer over at MIT though, after Massachusetts Industry of Technology professor Hal Abelson asked his computer science student’s one question; what do you want your cell phone to be able to do?

Their task was to design a software program for mobile phones that will use the upcoming Android operating system, and though they didn’t have any phones to work on (they used a computer simulator to design their programs), the opportunities they glanced are mesmerizing.

Seven teams of students set to create a program that embodied what they thought a phone should do; and it appears that the general consensus is that it should lock in to your location. One project named GeoLife, is designed to send a message or buzz the user when they pass by a geographical location (a supermarket, chemist, etc) if a note on their to-do list requires them to enter. For example, if you need milk and it’s on your to-do list, then when you pass by your local supermarket… bzzzt!

Another project named Locale was designed to let users configure their phones to automatically adjust their settings upon arriving at a different geographical zone. For example, the phone would switch to vibrate mode in the office, silent mode at the theatre (or at your mother-in-laws house), and ring everywhere else.

Locale was also advanced to the finals of a $10 million Android developers challenge that Google is running.

”This class is a glimpse of the future, and what’s nice, the not-so-distant future,” Abelson said Friday at a gathering where the students presented their final projects.

All of this comes just under a week after Reuters reported on comments made by Professor Jonathan Zittrain in his new book regarding the possibility that this new era of gadgets – blackberry’s, iPhone’s, etc – threaten the future of the internet.

Unlike home computers, new Internet-enabled gadgets don’t lend themselves to the sort of tinkering and collaboration that leads to technological advances, he says. And while Apple’s iPhone has only just opened itself up to third party applications – though with a neurotic caveat that they must pass Apple’s OK first – Google’s Android is definitely going to lay waste to Zittrain’s views.

However Zittrain’s views are emblematic of a naïve and almost obsessive point of view. From the Reuters article; “Society should resist more regulation and place its trust in the Internet’s users. The success of Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia written and edited by its readers, shows how self-governance can work.”

The idea that Wikipedia has been an unqualified success is far from true, and the “self governance” of the internet has yet to fully prove itself as foolproof. One need only reflect on the level of discourse on Digg to realize that the internet, and the social group, is a long way from rightfully inheriting the reins of devices like the iPhone.

Bookmark to: