Most of us take the equipment in our smartphone for granted. Each component works behind the scenes to serve a specific purpose, and that's that. But when those individual devices are listed together, it starts to read like an excerpt from 1984. "A camera to capture photos and video, GPS for location-based services, a microphone for recording audio, an accelerometer for tracking speed.'

Essentially, we're all walking data-collection machines when we're carrying a smartphone. It's just that no one has openly made an effort to aggregate all that information until now.

Born at the MIT Media Lab, "Behavio's open source Android platform turns phones into smart sensors of people's behaviors and surroundings— sensing how people use their phones, how they communicate with others, and environmental factors like sound, light and motion. As a result, Behavio can understand trends and behavioral changes in individuals as well as entire communities, and help them understand and make use of this information."

Behavio's possibilities are exciting, but if you're the least bit cynical, enthusiasm should come with a small dose of paranoia. And thanks to a recent $355,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, we'll see Behavio in action sooner than later.