Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Walkference anyone?

Imagine walking around Colaba in a virtual park , You arrive at a "virtual gate", which is basically a guy standing outside Oxford Bookstore. He sells you the "delegate pass", for a small fee. The pass has a list of instruction on it that you must follow for the course of the day. The instructions are like a treasure hunt, they ask you to walk in a certain direction, or to a certain venue. Either at the venue, or on the road - you will meet other delegates and exchange information.

Why do they do this you ask? .. apparently the people you meet and information you exchange (you capture discussions via speech balloons mind you..) will lead you closer to your goal, requirement, etc.

“ Each card given to delegates is part of a larger "sorting algorithm" or system designed to match people based on their interests. It happens all the time on websites like Amazon (or AdultFriendFinder, if you like) but invisibly at the back end. Here we are creating a sort of computer out of a crowd of people walking around.”

Sounds like one of those dreams you have after watching late night Sci-Fi movies? that was my reaction too when a friend mentioned that he had been to a walkfrence last weekend.

I am still confused, but i definitely find the concept wacky!

Wouldn’t mind if some one throws more light on this one!

Link:
http://rohitgupta.xwiki.com/xwiki/bin/view/Main/Comics%20AlgoYatra%202007

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I was just going through few articles and probably share some knowledge on what is this all about. Walkference, is based on a Psychogeography. Basically the idea is that you start exploring a city, infact walking in a city with some pre-defined rules. Rules would be like turn right on first street, turn left on second junction etc. Now you are not walking in the city with your own instincts but you adopt characteristics of a machine and do exactly as instructed.

Experiments seems to have been done on this and it seems to have been a great success in terms of meeting new people, people with same interests and knowing so many things which would all be such a powerful source of information for any research.

Even if we are not a part of these, its just wonderful to know about these creative and powerful ideas. Isn't it?

Unknown said...

I actually did visualize the whole exercise in my mind and now I feel drunk!! No offense to the sober ones!!!