the timboucher experience

I’ve gotten in the habit of eating other people’s fortune cookies. Recently I got one that read: “A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations.” Just found a voicemail from a couple of days ago which appears to be from my own phone number - except one digit off. Based on the scant audio that appears in this file, I have deduced that a child in Seattle must have attempted to dial his own phone number and missed it by a digit. At the end, the mom comes on, “Hello…?” Too bad I didn’t catch the actual call, I could have pretended to be from the future.

Speaking of the future, our Chicago correspondent wrote in recently with a link to an art piece called Tweenbots.

Tweenbots are human-dependent robots that navigate the city with the help of pedestrians they encounter. Rolling at a constant speed, in a straight line, Tweenbots have a destination displayed on a flag, and rely on people they meet to read this flag and to aim them in the right direction to reach their goal.

Not sure fully what the context this person had in mind with this project, but for me it rings bells and connects dots that I have been exploring on a variety of levels. In particular, I’ve been studying land navigation techniques, map reading, etc. Was reading today in the manual about dead reckoning, where you sight point-to-point using a lensatic compass in the field in order to follow a particular azimuth. A little bit like the way this “social robot” navigates along straight lines. The difference - or one of them, anyway - is that in orienteering, you’re navigating mostly a geographic landscape, whereas in the case of the Tweenbots, you’re navigating also a social space which brings to mind lots of possibilities…

Though, I’m totally not in agreement with this part of the project, though I realize it was partly motivated by cost issues:

Because I built them with minimal technology, I had no way of tracking the Tweenbot’s progress, and so I set out on the first test with a video camera hidden in my purse. I placed the Tweenbot down on the sidewalk, and walked far enough away that I would not be observed as the Tweenbot––a smiling 10-inch tall cardboard missionary––bumped along towards his inevitable fate.

Since I’m studying radio technology right now, maybe I’m a bit biased - but I just think a project like this could use some really super simple GPS device embedded. I guess I’m just trying to think of how this could work on a bigger scale. My immediate thought was that this is what a company like Google, or even a small start-up competitor could do on quite possibly a shoe-string environment to capture some REALLY incredible data about a city.

“Oh look honey, it’s one of the GoogleBots. He looks just like a big cuddly Roomba. Let’s go over and talk to him.”

The robot could answer questions even. And it could record and broadcast its experiences. Hm, Google, robots, ‘mobile,’ Android? See where I’m going with this…

One thing our bicycle survey team over at Monument City has noticed is the stiffness and inflexibility you experience as a user in Google’s current Street View map feature. It’s cludgy and only lets you follow the artificial flow lines through a city that a car can achieve. It doesn’t take into account more than that because they can’t index more than that yet reliably. Which makes it weird that you can create using Google a walking map through the city that includes features the application simply cannot output in street view because they haven’t figure out how to map it yet.

I’ve thought at length about what it would take to create a reliable and consistent three-dimensional camera to mount somehow on a bicycle or cyclist. Or on a pedestrian for that matter. Hm, and while I’m on this subject: does anybody know of a Google or third-party utility that would allow me to input a (car) route map and output a video composed out of Google Maps Street View images? Now that would be a cool art project because you could also make money out of it. Remember that dream I had about the “temperplexes”? They were these unmanned aerial vehicles that could chase you around and electrocute you. And the police sirens in that world played America The Beautiful. Sometimes I think maybe we’re not so far off!

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Jan. 26, 2009 — The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] has successfully demonstrated that a laser system mounted on an Avenger combat vehicle can shoot down a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) like those that increasingly threaten U.S. troops deployed in war zones.

Oh, wait, this reminds me of what I was going to write about in relation to this person’s robot art navigational proto-experiment (which, yes I know it’s art, but wish were more scientific!).

“If Twitter were human, what kind of a person would it be?”

I guess its because the Twitter-brand so totally pwns the syllable “TW” and everything related to it, I immediately thought of the social microconversation site Twitter. Imagine if the little Tweenbot were stumbling around in cyberspace and kept getting nudged and re-directed every time somebody mentioned them in Twitter. I think that’s sort of how the #hashtags concept works - though I’m not totally clear on that yet. I’m just thinking of something like a little electronic program that basically just stumbles around on the web, with its eventual destination plastered on it, getting bumped and prodded and knocked about until it eventually reaches its destination. Perhaps there’s some seed for a truly cross-platform multi-environment device-independent signal transmission system. Like if you just write “Santa Claus” on a stamped envelope, it automatically goes - well, somewhere… maybe that’s a bad example. But I’m thinking like, you send out a bit of CW in ham radio, it connects to a repeate which connects to a web gateway somewhere geographically distant, which then converts the signal to a Twitter feed which converts and re-transmits back out as a pager-message to a specific phone number. Stuff like that. Kinda like a message in a bottle I guess that just sort of stumbles around until it reaches an appropriate destination.

Oh, and one other reference I wanted to cram into this post before I forget. I wonder if you could legally and technically transmit telecommand information to and from one of these little wandering information-seeking robots, a real-world electronic ground intelligence-gathering system. Remember this little guy?

And one other item via Baltimore contacts:

A few bicyclists ride with contrail a couple times per week –> faint lines on the road inspire curiosity and remind bikers where it’s safe to ride –> new bikers are encouraged to ride and use contrail –> contrail lines get brighter as community grows.

Makes me think maybe there is some possible marriage between all of these subjects: programming and re-programming GPS routes, and/or physically marking them in order to create a totally user-built US Bikeways System™. It’s a great idea, but I’m thinking slightly more permanent marks would be needed to really be kept up on distance/touring routes. Something halfway between chalk and spray-paint to mark out routes for other cyclists and wayfarers - that and begin developing driver awareness of bicyclists on local through-routes where people don’t necessarily expect to see riders. At least until proper signage is developed, I guess. I feel like there are a few different business ideas all wrapped up in this, only to be unwound by the right approach.

Building from the nation’s existing bicycle routes and trails, the group drafted a map with a nation-wide corridor of potential bike routes. They envision a spider’s web of cycling routes that will crisscross the nation and connect every major metro area.

Damn, I just keep finding and adding links to this post. See also: signal tree, Basque tree carvings.

In addition, hobo’s created a system of symbols to communicate and assist other travelers. These symbols were scratched or chalked on the gate of a residence, barnyard or somewhere in the rail yard. These symbols meant things like “good place for a handout,” “fake illness here,” “beware of dog,” and “owner has a bad temper.” Hobo’s also created signals in trees by bending young branches with string or rope. The branch would mature and remain permanently bent, meaning its owner was sympathetic.

• Minister promises to rise from the dead… and fails
• Lockdown
• Put that in your poop and smoke it
• We’re Number One!
• I’m moving up in the occult world!