I’ve lately been excited by the concept of the senseable city (a term I’m borrowing from MIT). Being able to measure and visualize the intangible rhythms and pulses of a city can be incredibly powerful. As mobile devices are becoming more pervasive, and embeddable sensors cheaper, we have richer amounts of data at our disposal. Now, I know this could feed all your worst nightmares about Big Brother, and as with any technology, in the wrong hands, it could be used for nefarious purposes. However, this isn’t about a centrally controlled system of CCTV’s; this is about large amounts of raw anonymous data aggregated in ways where the whole tells us much more than any one part. Raw anonymous data doesn’t sound sexy, but Current City makes it look sexy:
SMS during New Years Eve from realtime city on Vimeo.
This is a visualization of SMS activity during New Years Eve in Amsterdam. As expected, SMS activity goes way up at midnight. This type of analysis isn’t about tracking any one person, but seeing the greater whole. While it doesn’t tell us anything groundbreaking, it gives a glimpse into another world of linkages that sits on top of the physical world – a technosphere that links us virtually within our physical environments. However, visualizations of Twitter activity in Iran might give you a glimpse into the local political effects of these intangible connections. There are a number of these visualizations you can find on Vimeo or YouTube (including one of cell phone activity during the inauguration) and I suggest checking them out.
Much of this work is coming out of universities, and a couple of pioneering entrepreneurs with PhDs. However, the real excitement rests in the hands of the tinkerers, thanks to an ambitious project – Pachube. Pachube is:
…a service that enables you to connect, tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices, buildings and environments around the world. The key aim is to facilitate interaction between remote environments, both physical and virtual.
Pachube gives any person with a little technical background the ability publish and consume raw sensor data from all over the world. While this won’t appeal to all Internet citizens, it could have great impact on the way we track and visualize the measured world. What Pachube gives novice users and professionals alike is a low cost method for tracking performance, understanding trends and relationships, and holding people accountable. Additionally, with access to cheap remote monitoring devices from providers like iobridge, the world of grassroots monitoring and tracking could explode.
The power of Pachube is in the data format, not in any particular toolset. By providing a predictable and easy to maintain data format, Pachube opens up a world of possibilities. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the possible imacts of these emerging tools. Comment below.
Tags: data, senseable city, sensors, technosphere, virtual cities