In Proceedings of the 1st Geographic Human-Computer Interaction Workshop. Colocated with ACM CHI'13. Paris, France. April 2013.
One of the most interesting trends in the recent years has been the re-discovery of spatial locality, i.e., of the here and now. In a world of global spreading of information, location is assuming a fundamental role again. We can consider it as a sort of “rebirth” of locality.
In this position paper, firstly, we present a brief summary of our current work on models, algorithms, applications and tools based on and for spatially-embedded social networks, i.e., networks where the interacting individuals have a well-defined position in space. Our work is focussed on global phenomena that are experienced at a very local scale: we believe that the availability of real-time information about individuals at local, community and global level can be exploited together in order to develop and support novel models, applications and systems. In the second part of the paper we outline the challenges and the opportunities in this promising area, discussing key open problems and research directions.