The Global Warming Tracking Network
A concept for Telecom Italia’s Future Centre.
This is a concept where people offer the idle time of their cell phones to compute changes in global climate. Together with an additional information service for posting wishes, they can stay in touch with events related to global warming.
The city of Venice faces a future beneath sea level. Due to the effects of global warming, many beaches in Italy will disappear. With its Future Centre in Venice, can we use the Telecom Italia’s expansive network to track global warming, giving this trend a presence in our daily lives? What if their telecommunication satellite scans the earth, and distributes its data to cell phone clients, using their collective computing power to analyse this data?
As in the SETI@Home project, where people offer the idle time of their computers to search for signals from outer space, people can offer their phones to participate in the analysis of global warming data, to detect changes on the earth’s surface.
People would not need to oversee their calculations, but while they are washing their hair or dreaming on the train, suddenly their cell phone gives them a sign, that for example, a piece of Antarctica has just broken away, with all its effects. In this moment, people can make a wish for the future.
In Venice, at the Global Warming Tracking Centre (Future Centre), a people’s parliament gathers whenever a global warming event occurs. They send out all the wishes collectively in a symbolic ceremony to the TI satellite, from where they will continue traveling on eternally as radio waves. This parliament however is not a particular elected circle of people. Much more, anyone can participate in this ceromony who happens to be nearby on such occasions.
Year:
2005
