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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1999 Radio will make us all parasites IMAGINE you could buy a digital radio about the size of a novel to be screwed to the side of your house, or placed in a window, and connected to your computer. If others in your community did the same, then as soon as you powered up, your unit would send a search signal looking for the nearest neighbour up and running. It would most likely get a series of replies, then automatically configure itself to create the most efficient network based on relative signal strengths, transmission delay times and concentration of traffic in the vicinity. You and your neighbours would be automatically connected via a parasitic sub-net. As one community after another powered up, the net would grow across the region, and soon thousands would have their own intranet without the need for any formal network. Every few hours, each element could check to see if it was still optimised relative to the overall growth. As the number of people involved grew, so would the net configuration and the need to continually poll. In the event of an individual radio unit failing, traffic could be automatically rerouted and the net reconfigured to take account of the missing node. At some point, a few people representing an area could buy Internet access from a low-orbit balloon at an altitude of 26km, or from a backbone optical-fibre net provider. The financing could be managed by the host's software, allowing Internet access only if a very low flat fee has been paid for the year. What is required to achieve all of this? Only the allocation of spare frequency space, power-limiting specifications to keep radio operation safe and interference-free, and smart software. Of course, a small amount of community spirit is also called for, with neighbour helping neighbour to solve a few problems here and there. This technology is under trial in the US and being developed in Britain and Israel too. The initial speed is 11Mbit/s, with 25 and 50Mbit/s looking increasingly likely. It will be interesting to see how people react to all this, and more especially the extension that will arise when all our white and brown goods, cars, organisers, mobile phones and jewellery contain similar low-power, short-range radio technology. Parasitic networks will come of age, with myriad paths to choose from when we send a message. So, if I am in a room without a radio connection, my computer may seek out an individual leaving the building, and leap to their phone. The next opportunity for my message may come in the form of a taxi. Once it has moved into the storage space of the taxi, it may decide to hop from one vehicle to another along a street to a highway and on to a motorway. Soon, it is well on to its destination at the other end of the country or planet, and no network was required - only things. Of course, such networks are prone to failures and interruptions, but with a mobile population of people and things, such effects will be short lived. I think all of this can be confidently placed in the disruptive category: it will upset a few people and organisations, and could see a replay of the 1960s Radio Caroline commercial radio and CB radio sagas. "This technology might turn out to be OK for our American cousins, but wholly inappropriate here because, etc..." Not for long, though. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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