Next Years project

Check how the ideas and practice have evolved in the AFLF 2009 Emerging Technologies trials.

We've moved to an iPhone to run the AR on so check us out:

http://redcentreway.blogspot.com

2 Audio Essays:Science & Tech in 1859 and 2015

Have a go at these two interesting Audio essays, approximately 20 minutes each, and both indicating the consequences of wiring up the world.

Why 1859 was Important

By 1859 Telegraph wires were starting to snake out across the US and a mere 13 years later Adelaide will be able to text Darwin and on to the rest of the world. This first essay gives a snapshot of some of the crucial scientific inventions, technologies, research and development that underpinned the meteoric acceleration of Western tech.   The essay states that for the year 2009, there is an average of 1.73 significant 150th scientific anniversaries per week. Charles Darwin changed his image forever by publishing that first book, the first Bra was patented, research underpinning the quantum nature of reality emerged and for the first time in history Aluminum became cheaper than gold...   Get yourself a spare 25 mins and have a listen.

Listen On 1:

Full 30 min Podcast available at: 
http://www.archive.org/details/Orr_20081012scienceAndTechnologyIn1859

As a counterpoint to these heady days, imagine a future where a silicon big brother is tracking your every move by mobile phone triangulation and gps signaling.  This is the iPhone from hell!

When Talk is Cheap, silence is suspect ... Under the HAMMER

Our Pancultural-e project is about piloting new ways to guide pertinent information directly to a users mobile device as a result of their GPS grid location. 

Melbourne based Andrew Herrick puts a chilling dystopian spin, similar to Orwell's 1984 novel, on the use of computer evaluated citizen location sensing technology. He  imagines a social environment where our every move is tracked by our implanted GPS/Mobile Phone and analysed by a multitude silicon masters.  Break the any of the rules and you're brain gets microwaved from a satellite in orbit. This is the age where the term 'surgical strike' ceases to be a metaphor...

Listen On 2: 

High
Altitude

Morphographic

Monitoring

Evaluation

Response

Full 30 min Podcast available at: 

http://www.archive.org/details/Orr_20081026underTheHammer

High

Progress report Aug 26-08

Memestreme 2008 Progress Report. Hitting the ground running with GPS and rfid tech.

IAD students Minnie, Jackie and Naurelle have been out in the field, creek really, getting across all things GPS.  We've laid in waypoints and routes on the Garmin eTrex HC and tested the ASUS Virtual Tour Logger.  So that we can plot our routes onto Google Earth we've been transcribing the GIS data into a spreadsheet on the laptop and inputting the manually.

Parks and Wildlife staff Aaron Kopp, Donald Turner Graeme Horne and Dylan Wesley Cole are building the media data sets we'll be using with the NECS rfid Learning table

This involves preparing mp3 audio, jpg photos, text, video and PowerPoint presentation, caching them into discrete media presentations [multimedia slideshows] and editing them with the rfid tech so that the tags trigger specific media slideshows. By selecting the rfid tag next to an item in the museum [embedded in a laminated A4 info sheet] and swiping the sheet across the tag reader at the base of the large screen display additional media information is made available to the user.

The actual Virtual Guded tour has been completed and we are now collaboratively 'fine tuning' the accompanying media. This involves ensuring the metatagging is suitable, there's a little bit of mp3 editing with Audacity to be done, and we are still testing what is the best style of map to use. Were using 3 different maps in our field testing;

1. some beautiful high quality maps generously supplied by Andy Roberts at NT Dept. Lands Planning and Infrastructure 
   
2. PDF visitor  handout maps
   
3. google earth
   

Surprisingly we get excellent GIS accuracy with a PDF copy of the NT Parks and Wildlife Services Telegraph Station visitor handout sheet. Which reminds me of the zillions that NASA spent in the early 1960's developing ballpoint pens for their astronauts in zero gravity... while the soviets used pencils.
Notwithstanding, the lands and Planning maps seem to offer the best user experience [clarity and accuracy, but this is a collaborative project and we'll advise you when a firm decision has been made.

Where was JFK when I got shot?

OR: 'Placing the 1872 Completion of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line in historical context.

Please use the comments area to add YOUR recollection of histori

cal events either side of the 1872 date, for example;

1908 Henry Ford's first Model T motor car rolls of the production line in Dearborn Michigan ushering in another epoch of mass production [remember the Colt 45?].

1746 Wired Monks

1844 May 24, Morse sends a telegram from Washington to Baltimore, the 1st message...'What hath God wrought! [He died July 1872, 7 weeks before Charles Todd connected the final piece of line, Aug 26 1872]

1857 16th August completion of the first transatlantic cable, Queen Victoria sends a telegram to president Buchanan.
1859 The solar superstorm of 1859 was the fiercest ever recorded. A

uroras filled the sky as far South as the Caribbean, magnetic compasses went haywire and telegraph systems failed....

1861 US East West overland telegraph line completed

1872 Brigham Young is arrested for polygamy (28 wives).
1872 July 2, Samuel Morse [the father of open source software?] dies about 7 weeks before Charles Todd completes link for the Aussie overland telegraph line Aug 26 1872.

1873 Eadweard Muybridge, yep the spelling is correct, settled a bet on whether the hoofs of a horse galloping are ever all in the air at once. Wagers aside, collaborating with John D. Isaacs, the resultant photographic apparatus ushered in the very start of that Leviathan we've all come to love, motion pictures. [Here's a great link to his work from a really good online Gallery; Artsy. Well worth a look]

1873 Jesse James and James Younger gang's 1st train robbery (Adair Iowa) 

Mike Smith Archaeologist-environmental historian on Central Australia around 1870 [www.abc.net.au/rn] 

If you can add  to this article [Use Comments please] by suggesting important events that happened in this general milieu it will be appreciated.

3 Iterations: Global Communications

History doesn't repeat itself [but it rhymes sometimes], and contrary to my own expectations, I'm really enjoying the history behind this technological marvel of it's day.  Several recent books about history of the telegraph rollout: 'The Victorian Internet' [Global], and Alice Thompson's 'The singing line', about the Oz rollout. [she's the Great great grand daughter of Charles Todd and, appropriately enough, now works for the London Daily Telegraph.

So, lets start with a potted history of global communications first 3 iterations, and as our "memestreme" Flexible Learning Framework steps into second gear cop an optic on this for starters...

Iteration 1 has got to be the wire that stretched around the world, the Telegraph.

Time: August 1872

Location: Central Mt Stuart, 220Km North of Alice, and according to the best cartographers of the day, this put him at the Mountain closest to our geographical centre.

The Man: Charles Todd

Iteration 2 for my money is the World Wide Web.

Time:  according to Kevin Kelly in 07 it’s age was about 5000 days old.

Location: A nexus near you

The man/kind of: Tim Berners-Lee was the Internet ? so maybe no one individually, and a whole bunch of humans collectively.

Iteration 3: The ‘semantic web’ and various other epithets

Time: Nowish

Location: Any computer connected to the net and/or a 3G network plus a variety of mobiles; iPhone, Blackberry or similar PDA’s

The mankind: The mankind
Aurora (Part 1) from Adaptive Path on Vimeo.

Flexible Learning Framworks Project Start

Pancultural-e Blog

 

Well, the wait is over, everything is coming together for our ‘Memestreme’ project, so… where to start?

 

Metro/Urban Prelude The two modes of operation for our product]

I’m of the opinion that the July 11 iPhone launch will usher in a new interconnected, location specific ITC epoch. Location sensing WiFi 3G hand-helds with high processing capacity making use of push technologies to sync data with minimal IP traffic will change the urban/metro connectivity landscape.

A great marketing innovation from iPhone was to provide a commercial website  mechanism to allow end-users/geeks/nerds to develop then upload their own apps, using the open Source Development Kit code[SDK]. This [free] completely web based business mechanism allows new uploaded apps for all to trial, and as best applications percolate to the top of the user chain, evolution and entropy reign.  Hence, user voted successful widgets are then marketed from the site so that the developers themselves get around 70% of sales revenue,Apple takes 10% and the rest goes to the website operators. This new-ish marketing paradigm [ask yourself where the factory outlet for eBay is located] is sure to spawn so beautiful tools, toys and trinkets.

Be aware though that the majority of these electronic appliances [laptops, mobile phones, PSPS, digital TV receivers, Digital Radios,  Bluetooth devices etc] will need to be fully or partially bathed in the plethora of electromagnetic frequencies that bounce around our metro urban landscapes. Out in remote areas we have weak GPS signals and expensive sat-nav services.  We’re going for the low cost remote service.

In Remote areas no one can hear you beam [unless your prepared to fork out $10 a minute for sat-nav coms, plus prohibitively expensive units to talk on and extra ‘extras’ to transact with fax, email GIS data and the like.

Off the beaten track though, where our ‘Memestreme’ Virtual Tourism project runs Metro tele-communications tech will have minimal influence. 3G, WiFi, WiMax, Phone landlines and such will hold no sway in the great Australian outback. Sure, sometime in the future, satellites may one day be able to up/download digital media content wherever one is on the planet.  Until then though the tech we are developing will be one of the only available and affordable ways to allow for user interaction with remote locations off the beaten track.

After the Glossary below read on for a concise overview of the project objectives.

Glossary:

CoA	Commonwealth of Australia [Who will own copyright of our final products]
Framework	The Flexible Learning Framework. [Who fund/disseminate our learning]
Cyberspace	Events and Info portrayed in online environments
Meat space	Events enacted in the physical world [normal reality]
PDA-GPS	Hand-held media player able to sense its location on the earths surface
Geo-reference	A set of math and map coordinates that fix a point on the earths surface
rfid	Radio Frequency Identification Tags that transact wirelessly with computers
Second Life	A Virtual environment that models real life existence
Avatar	The GUI persona one uses to experience existence in a virtual world
Mutual reality	The capacity for multiple avatars to interact in an online environment
Augmented reality	Basically, a PDA-GPS unit that continuously computes your location and then provides you with on-screen information relevant to that Geo-reference
Cloud Computing	This is where our personal or corporate data are housed on server farms or other non-local hard drives. In this way we have a wealth of data available aad rather than access it from our limited space personal hard drive, we connect over IP or WiFiand pull it of internet based servers.  For example, people make a 2nd email account and upload  aafew gig of faamil piics and movies .up there’ to store it.
Push computing	This tech is designed to reduce the amount of IP traffic a hand-held has to download [mainly] to synch with other interdependent machines. Small streams of data are pushed over IP to all your computing devices to

 

 

Objective One; Virtual Guide Tourist Mode

A Virtual Guided tour from Snow Kenna park in the Alice CBD meanders along the 4Km NT Parks and Wildlife signed “Riverside walk” track along the banks of the Todd River into the Telegraph Station and then from point to point along the historic buildings in the Telegraph Station compound.

 

Objective Two: Virtual Guide Science Mode

A field operatives utilization of the same technology.  Where we’re targeting Tourist organizations, Town Councils, Mining Exploration companies, Geological surveys, Traditional owners, Ecologists etc who would need to make recurrent trips into given areas to report, record, analyse and act on the various facets of their data sets.

The way we see this happening is envisaged into four linear sequences:

[1] A new trip to say the Davenport ranges is made by a Parks and Wildlife ranger to report on a variety of circumstances; weed ingress, bush fire damage, feral pest infestations. Similar to the way we log in points along a tourist route, the ranger logs point all along the trail from start to finish.  This in itself serves as the road map for subsequent field trips. And as the Geo-referencing is accurate to about 6 meters it also doubles as a very clever way to stop folk getting lost out in the harsh and unforgiving wilderness. Back to method 1…

Evidence is plotted against some of these points [accurate to 6 metres] which can include inexpensive cameras that also log the GIS coordinates, mp3 audio ‘reports’ that can be recorded onsite to describe some aspect of the territory, video can also be laid in to further describe geo-features that are relevant and of course text can be inserted. At tours end yuo press a button and the tour is finished.

[2] Once back at HQ this trip is loaded into a multimedia database containing all the media about the trio, and it is time stamped. This interfaces with the standard GIS topographical maps so this other layer of info is included in the tour.

[3] Some time later a Ranger re-visits the logged trip and updates the journey, perhaps adding new log points of significance, taking photos and videos from the same Geo-referenced points to show any changes that have occurred over time and adding audio and text to amend info and append info.

[4] Back at HQ these extra ‘layers’ of information are superimposed into the existing database utility to gradually build up a time based  description of , in this case, of how a land is healing.

 

Objective Three: Second Lifeâ [2L] Reflection Mode.

Text, Audio [mp3], Photos [jpg] and Video [mp4] are the composite products of the above two objectives. Each logged point will make available multimedia information that will add value to each geographic coordinate. Team member Georgina Nou has researched and liaised with an island owner in 2L to construct a virtual representation of the Alice Springs Telegraph Station tour.  Virtual Buildings are being constructed that will allow 2L users to enter and viewing screens and objects are enabled so that users can watch videos, listen to audio clips, call up teal-time maps, see commercial promos and generally interact with our media and get a virtual taste of the physical tour.

 

Objective Four: Giving it up for the CoA and the Framework

At projects end we transfer copyright ownership of the project deliverables to the Commonwealth of Australia on a Share 2 license arrangement [LINK to License information].  Our Innovations project is then made available across the Frameworks National Training Network and in the Commonwealth of Australia’s archives. [Where we fervently hope it will be of use to others engaging in this line of research]

Modelling the project for use and view on the networks’ creates something of an artistic and technical challenge: how do we ‘model’ our media to represent a meat space Augmented Reality tour and a cyberspace virtual reality tour?

Meat Space Tour

e.g A GPS synched software program [LINK INFO Virtual Guide from New England Computer Solutions] provides a compass and/or a map to guide to steer a user along successive points on the tour.  At each grid reference point media information pertinent to each GPS coordinate is made available to the user on the PDA screen. [To augment their experience and knowledge of that exact spot on the Worlds surface].

 

So how can we model this to provide an accurate representation of a users experience? After careful consideration we have come up with this idea, and whilst not set in stone, Richard Waring , who manages the tele-conferencing operations from CDU Alice Springs and myself can collaborate to better explain the practical applicationnof the technology.

 

Yochai Benkler

Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization.

Yochai Benkler has been called "the leading intellectual of the information age." He proposes that volunteer-based projects such as Wikipedia and Linux are the next stage of human organization and... Read full bio »

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