Global News Wire December 19, 2001
OF ART, SCIENCE AND MYSTERIES
IS war an art form or is it a science? Ask those generals who are out at the front braving their men's lives and they will tell you that it is an art. If you have to think for a living, to outwit your counterpart across the border and spring a surprise on him, then clearly, the boundaries of your imagination are your only obstacles. If imagination and thought rule your fate, what else is war but art?
But cut back to those bespectacled scientists whose long hours of work have given our generals those machines and weapons, and you are sure to find the art argument ridiculed. This was the thought that raged in our minds when eWorld, in the course of scouring for information on the latest research and development work on the Internet, stumbled onto the news that sensors were being used to locate and pick on Taliban fighters in the hills and caves of Afghanistan.
Despite not being able to solve the metaphysical riddle, we were impressed by what those small objects, lying unsuspected all over and around those caves, can sniff and transmit back to HQ. The University of California at Berkeley has conducted an experiment to see how successful such an endeavour would be.
The goals of the experiment were: to deploy a sensor network onto a road from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV); to establish a time-synchronised multi-hop communication network among the nodes on the ground; to detect and track vehicles passing through the network; to transfer vehicle track information from the ground network to the UAV; and, to transfer vehicle track information from the UAV to an observer at the base camp, the site says.
In other words, these small sensors would be thrown around at random from an aerial unit and they would track all movement in the surrounding areas and convey the information through the aerial vehicle to the base camp.
In practice, this has been deployed successfully. The Web edition of the New Scientist magazine says that "The devices lie silent, watching for movement, heat, vibrations and other signals of activity and then report to airplanes or satellites above. This allows good surveillance of large areas and, crucially, a rapid response."
It quotes John Pike of Globalsecurity.org as saying, "Measurement sensors are hard to hide from. As winter moves in, infra-red detection becomes easier - warm air from ventilation shafts in bunkers shows up real well. And how do you fool seismic sensors that can detect and distinguish vibrations from the movement of jeeps, people or horses?"
And from hardcore tech, we move onto some software. The Federal Bureau of Investigation says that it is designing a program that will catch passwords used to encrypt data in particular machines that are under suspicion or watch. A New Scientist report says that this Trojan Horse program can be sent by e-mail with an innocent message as cover, to a suspect. Once it installs itself in his computer, it tracks its usage and grabs passwords that are used to encrypt messages and sends these to FBI officers.
Wired.com recently reported that the University of Texas at Austin put out a paper that talks about the development of an interface between a semiconductor and a neuron. In other words, technology that will help a chip communicate to the brain or vice-versa. They have been able to put a piece of semiconductor within nanometers of a neuron.
The next step is enable the two to communicate. Now, that, would be a break-through.
Finally, let us end with art. India-born Ansuman Biswas is using technology to display his artistic skills. TheLab.org, the site of an artist organisation, says, "Ansuman's exhibition, Self/Portrait, is an art work prompted by recent research into the relationship between emotions and physiological states." It says that he harnesses the pulsating energy of the heart to paint and compose. Small electrodes on the artist's skin will sense the internal electrical weather of his body and feed it into a computer. The external view of the artist will also be fed into the computer via a video camera.
These two views will then be mingled and projected onto the wall in front of the performer. "Through various contemplative practices Ansuman will cultivate particular states of mind and thus modulate the video portrait of himself."
Can art be used to calm your mind? Can art be used to calm the force of nations and stop war-mongering? Looks like science can't.
Copyright 2001 Financial Times Information
