Some people will shudder at Hiroki Enno's idea of a "social experiment," yet he believes the project could someday benefit society as a whole.
The 28-year-old CEO of Plasma Inc., a Tokyo-based IT company, is paying participants in exchange for allowing him to film their activities at home — 24 hours a day.
The subjects, whose identities are hidden, each received ¥200,000 ($1,830) at the end of month-long Project Exograph. The express purpose of the endeavor, which he describes as a "human record of life," is to collect data on consumer behavior to be analyzed by businesses and marketing experts for commercial and other uses.