Passive Stumbling and Information Awareness

(Or love story of stumbling and knowledge economy)

warning: under conceptualization

Ok so here’s a second try.

The Orb is a wireless network stumbling platform, there i said it.

Now why on earth should we need a stumbling platform, don’t we have already those bunch of kids trying to crack our wifi networks ? Why give them more toys ?

Well in first place, let me clarify that this is a Stumbling platform not a wardriving tool, nor a network cracker / sniffer, so let us see a little bit more of the difference between these guys.

Lets try to define wardriving. Imagine that little jimmy downloads a copy if his favourite tool (kismet, kismac, netstumbler etc.) then he goes through the streets scanning for networks and saving their details like name, protocol place found etc. If jimmy has been a good boy, he should have read before going out to play and now he knows how to capture information and eventually gain access to a network by cracking the password (key). Afterwards jimmy could or could not publish his discoveries on the web to share them with other wardrivers, publishing or not (depends of jimmy’s conscious) network passwords as well.

Now stumbling takes place when any wireless device gains knowledge of its environment: network discovery, which networks are available, what protocols, which devices. etc. yes indeed stumbling is the first step towards wardriving, but stumbling it self is not wardriving. Every single device that uses a wireless network stumbles all the time, your laptop, stumbles for wifi networks constantly (unless you turn off your antenna). Your cellphones, is stumbling all day long, reaching for new networks cells and providers (try using the search network function and see for your self). Hardly any device that make use of a network is not stumbling.

Ok now, once we clarified differences lets dig into theOrb.

We should start talking about the purpose of stumbling in first place, why if we have so many thingies stumbling already, we need some weird “something” around ?

• First and most important reason;

just imagine all the pretty things we could make out of the information visualisation. all those nice net art pictures or fancy colours making up forms. Ooh and what if we made it in real time, all those pretty colours dancing around in spatial installations to the rhythm of information generated music.

• Second: Information flow understanding

Ok for the rest of you boring non-dancers, theOrb demonstrates how the usage of passive stumbling might acquire knowledge of the social information flow taxonomy and awareness, both on local and metropolitan context… Say what ? lets try this, imagine that we could be aware of the amount of networks and devices that are around any given location at any given time, but the thing doesn’t stop there right ?

Sure not ! tell them Steve what will our non-dancing friends might get from our special promotion.

Well .hj if they call now they could also be aware of the amount of information travelling around and on which directions, with this information we acquire the generation of an urban understanding of the nature of the regional digital information, its flows, density reach and quality along with consuming habits of small regions and communities. in short we can profile the information flows. wow !

• Third: Local information sources and channels awareness.

Publishing localised information of near information access points permits citizens to gain awareness of places to access relevant information within their local context, activating in such ways new information flows there for common localised knowledge.

Ok now little jimmy doesn’t have to go wardriving around, for he and Timmy already knows where he can gain access to free and legal internet. he knows precisely where to go to get information and tell his friends about the cool knowledge his been gaining, afterwards he and his friends can start consuming and creating knowledge. Combine this with context relevant information and you’ll get a pretty smart and informed mob, how come ? lets tal about:

• Fourth: Social Information Awareness

If access to information clearly defines the level of cultural development within local communities, the awareness if such information is visibly inexistent in most non centric regions, costumed not to have access to such, citizens forsaken themselves from the habits of information consumption and limit their information to whatever commercial channels are tangible and effortless, caring not for the quantity nor quality.

If by publishing the local digital information channels among local communities, we activate the awareness of local possibilities to access and create new and context relevant information, the level of both local knowledge generation and information flow will increase, therefor enhancing life quality. As Don Pedro Ramirez would say “The more information sources you have, the more you can create. If you have no new information, you cannot be able to create.”

• Fifth: Identify Knowledge Sources

In any given knowledge society, information flows are a direct indicator of the creative process, by mapping not only sources of information but flow directions and quantity of information theOrb generates necessary information to identify information’s sources and nodes. Ok ok, I accept that information traffic itself wont let us know if such information is knowledge or not, but with a little human intelligence intervention we can be able to categorise the flows.

and those are some of the reasons we can afford theOrb (colours, remember all the pretty colours) but how the hell are you guys going to build this thing ?

well we are still on proof of concept stage, and have not a very defined idea of how it will end up looking but we do have a prototype plan to prove the concept, as soon as we can spare some money (hey, hardware or money donations anyone?) we’ll start up the building. here is what we’ve got.

Infraestructure

WebServices

Using such web services, the creation of infinite possibilities for knowledge discovery (on the usage of information).
Such as alternative information visualization, net art, and media installations. Optimisation of information services, enable local awareness services. for example, joe says:One day jimmy gets out his PSP and start up a game, and this game had some smart designers that said, “hey, why don’t we make this game Orb enabled, that would be cool”. so when jimmy starts to play the virtual environment is affected in real time by the local network information such as quantity of people around him, information resources etc. etc.

Lets take another really simple example the already well known google maps, where taking their mapping services along with some API, it is possible to create web applications that display information along with their physical reference.

Take a log file or realtime information created by Orbs, query it and play with such data to display it in any given format, whether its on top of a map, format it to be a grid of coordinates or a drawing or AI and resources in games, or target information services. etc.

The Orbs

Ok, you caught me, I am not an electrical engineer and i do not know how to stuff all the components inside a little sphere.
But the cool thing is, that the physical stumbler can have any form, and any variation you can imagine, for example I chose a sphere place some LED on it, a liquid external membrane that has a smoky texture dancing around and colour change meaning different states of theOrb.

Joe says, hey that stupid, its not functional, who will want a “ball” around, it will role and get lost, its not practical. It should practical, lets make it modular, a smaller sphere for each function, gps, gsm, wifi, memory etc etc. and place it on a holder.

ok i have to admit it, the modular thing is a good idea, but then we would have to call it “theMarbles” and who the hell would like to develop something called theMarbles, besides an orb its much prettier… well any ways the point is, stumblers can be designed in infinite ways.

The Engines

The project depends on several layers of software in order to enable such services, while we still haven’t thought of an feasible information architecture we do have been inspired by several great software to serve as foundations. If connected together you end up with a very powerful set of information services.

Profilium’s Relevance Engine:
The relevance engine is an advanced profiling engine that enables the distribution among wireless networks, with a little bit of imagination you could hack it to work on almost any kind of network.

Restate Media’s Mobile Engines:
Web Development framework that enables awesome interaction with mobile phones and web services.

JiTiK
Agent based scheduled information delivery system develop by Dr. Ramon Brena a bunch of great fellows at Monterrey Tech

Prototype…

This little baby holds the magic of the entire project. Its purpose is to gain information of nearby wireless communications in a passive, non-intrusive detection. While on the go Orb will scan and log wireless communication channels and devices, such as WiFi hotspots, Bluetooth enabled mobiles and computers, Mobile Phone Networks, etc.

Non-intrusive discoveries will be recorded on a temporal local memory, when orb gets access to an open internet connection, make this any open WiFi network or shared Bluetooth internet connection, it will communicate its findings to a central web server, that will acquire information via web services. Information can also be downloaded to a computer via usb or Bluetooth and then manually uploaded to web service.

theOrb will let know its current state of activity, by pulsing with a different pattern consisting of colours and frequency. Orbs will have random configuration and colours for each one and a different one for each major state:

1. Scanning
2. Found X channel
3. Idle (no pulse)
4. Transmitting data
5. Low battery

It consists of a hollow sphere that holds inside:

* GPS receiver*
* ZigBee**
* WiMax**
* RFID**
* WiFi Card*
* Bluetooth *
* Mini USB connection***
* GSM**
* CDMA**
* Some internal LED cluster*
* Internal memory device (mini hard drive, memory card etc.)*
* Light CPU running StumbOS+
* Power battery*

* Must have
** Could have
*** Can dispose if find another reliable way to power the orb
+ Unix based OS running stumbling applications

The Server

Every Orb transmits its discoveries to Services running on an LAMP server. These services must include an Open API to give third parties access to information. Services include:* Data Reception
* Data Mining
* Data Serving

The Profit
Social information awareness

* Information sources
* Information Density
* Information Reach
* Information Cohesion
* Information Flow
* Information Usages

Extra candy for nice kids

* compass for near places
* Pretty piece of decoration

Future Features

* Orb Personalities
* Inter Orb Relationships
* Virtual Orbs (ports for mobiles, psp etc.)
* Raphael Connectivity (ask joe about his raph)

UPDATE: Some weeks ago, this guy called Jean Yves develop a PSP WiFi Sniffer it does not crack networks, and this is perfect for it continues to offer the correct usage under the Orb Philosophy.Technorati Tags: data visualization information societies knowledge managment mobile orb research stumbling

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