Slashdot Mirror
Urban Exploration Walkware
wilfriedhoujebek writes "The Dutch Group Social Fiction has been experimenting with walking on algorithms for some time now. Under the heading ".walk" they are taking the thing one step further by introducing pseudo-software to determine the route of their walks. They explain how this works and how different .walk can be connected together to form a 'pedestrian computer'. You might want to read the postscript first."
They merge with the Ministry of Silly Walks!
sulli
RTFJ.
By some error, this didn't get posted with the Joke foot. Wonder why this happened.
This sig no verb.
This whole .walk thing is pretty interesting, especially having just re-read: 0wnzored.
lysergically yours
I want software that actually RUNS!
*ducks*
I dont think its supposed to be a joke this is about finding paths along streets using software or something
"We have got to make Stan understand the importance of voting, because he'll definitely vote for our guy." - South Park
Hence I don't need a computer to cough up a way for me to walk that will eventually waste my time. I already do it every damned day.
Hate me!
they are taking the thing one step further
So was the pun intended?
I don't get this... Can someone explain it a little better, please?
[sig]www.masterslate.org[/sig]
Unfortunatley, for some people once GUM is introduced into the algorithms the wole system falls apart.
~Z
Some how this all seems like some sort of subtle ploy to get me to execise... How I do despise them.
/. the entire planet.
Imagine it we could
-Code
---PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE---
"Now, where's the damn 'any' key?"
These guys REALLY need girlfriends!
That .walk stuff is indeed pedestrian.
Laws are for people with no friends.
bistromathmatics!
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
... compile your typical "Go two blocks, Turn left, Turn right twice, Repeat" walking algorithm into binary code and see how many people end up as road pizza.
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
It would be worthwhile to think of a way of formulating statements/rules that don't resemble the languages used in the ordinary computer world, this would stress that .walk is not merely an offshoot of something that is already existing but that it is a whole new field of research.
Translates to: Whilst open-standards are great and we could leverage and existing language that just wouldn't be cool enough. We need to invent a whole new difficult to learn language to obscure the fact that we've just reinvented the wheel (aka LOGO)
I've been wondering how long it would take before something like this would hit the market. I've always had the fantasy of using robots with set paths as dog walkers. Can you imagine driving through a residential area, with a bunch of robots leading dogs around? Well....maybe only rich neighborhoods at first, but things only get less expensive.
Of course, it would be a mixed blessing. It would take away another reason to get out of the house, and I don't imagine the robots would be able to clean up after the dogs at first. Plus you're going to need a huge robot to lead a big dog around. And there's nothing to pull the dog away when it bites the mailman.
Well, it seamed like a good fantasy. I'd buy one for my dog.
From the homepage http://www.socialfiction.org/:
.walk is a joke. For the other half: no, .walk is a serious attempt to find out if walking can be used for more than transportation alone. Because we were already exploring walking around on algorithms, it was a logical step to modify these little programs into something that actually solves problems. Theoretically these individual .walk programs could be connected into a computer. In the "programming .walk for dummies" text it is shown how you can solve quite complex computations by stripping them down to their smallest factor & have a interesting walk at the same time. .walk has however nothing to do with computer programming in any sense, it only mocks them. .walks is not developed by programmers & the .walk examples are written with only a minimal knowledge of both math & simple computer languages like Basic. Everybody should be able to figure out what a script does, but nevertheless people are scared by them, just as they are scared by Justin Timberlake's lips. This is in a sense part of the fun of the .walk project, there is nothing wrong with alienating people a little bit, because they will only love .walk the better for it in the end.
Pseudo software as a self generating route description. Is this a joke?
For the half of it: yes,
Do you fancy a walk with us?
City officals will be able to place road signs in areas that are not on the drunken route.
Police could redesign footpaths so that they lead straight into the detox cells.
The possibilities are endless.
Making trouble today for a better tomorrow...
I am so confused by this site. First it gives some strange algorithms, and then it explains the algorithm in English:
"Your export code is 2 Repeat the following instructions; walk the first street left, second street right, then you take the street left that is indicated as your export code. Every time you meet another psychogeographer you exchange export codes. This new code will change the 3rth turn. Remember how often you exchange export code. When you have walked for one hour you return to the place your are supposed to meet. Once arrived there report the number of encounters to socialfiction.org."
The hell? And later it makes a crack about slashdot. What are they smokin'?
--nude
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Repeat
{
1 st street left
2 nd street right
2 nd street left
fpaintf(stdwall,"HELLO WORLD") }
It's a joke. Read the article before your knee jerks.
http://www.socialfiction.org/psychogeograph
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
Has anyone read Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age"?
He already invented the pedestrian computer in that novel. Of course the interactions are a wee bit more "colorful" there than just walking by each other...
I've always had the fantasy of using robots with set paths as dog walkers. Can you imagine driving through a residential area, with a bunch of robots leading dogs around?
Oh sure, that's how it starts. Nice and innocently. Then you'll see people using these walking robots to redecorate their house. Other uses for them will be found and, before you know it, evil penquins will be using them to steal priceless jewels from museums!
Stop the madness now! We've got to nip this in the bud before it gets out of hand!
GMD
watch this
But the real question is, does Moore's Law apply? :)
So does this work in reverse? Can I type of a walk I see some place and get an interesting algorithm?
I'd be curios to see what kind of algorithm I'd get by entering Funky Walker Dirty Talker's steps.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
What about errors invoked by an agent stopping off at a pub for a round?
There is something wonderful in seeing a wrong-headed majority assailed by truth. ~John Kenneth Galbraith
I recently entered a pun competition.
;-)
:)
I entered 10 times and I was convinced that one of them would win.
But, no pun in ten did.
cLive
(from Dennis/Punt, if I remember correctly
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Just saw the episode. Lisa joins Mensa and Comic Book guy is wearing a shirt with
C:\
C:\Dos\Run
Run \Dos\Run
I did the London walk and...
A) I thought it would be a dehumanising experience
B) It turned out to be a great way to see streets in London that I'd never walked down and never would have walked down.
I thought it was funny that one of the posters above wondered whether this is what happens when you are sans girlfriend. Quite apart from the fact that Hemos is the only confirmed sighting of a mated Slashdotter (prove me wrong, studly geeks!) - I DID THE WALK WITH MY GIRLFRIEND! So there.
Her account is here...
why would anyone want to be walking on computers? wouldn't they break if you walked on them? if not, where can i get a case this robust?
/wow
this reminds me of when i was in high school and a friend of mine and i would get bored and drive. we determined our path by pulling cards, red for right, black for left and the card number determined the number of intersections before the next card. good fun on a saturday night. if you're _really_ bored.....
For those of you not familiar, HEX is a lovely analogy constructed out of fictional glass tubes through which vast numbers of ants walk, diverted by gates (you get the idea). It has components including an unreal-time clock and generates messages along the lines of "+++ Out Of Cheese Error. Redo from Start +++". It apparently bears a witty "Anthill Inside" legend, and in one of the Discworld adventure games a comment is made that when you break it and the ants escape "it's been completely debugged".
I don't need to painfully fill in the gap between "walkware" and "ants walking around inside HEX", do I?
from the Simpsons archive:
CBG: We are hardly nerds, would a nerd wear such an irreverent sweatshirt?
Lisa: (Reading sweatshirt) C:/DOS C:/DOS/RUN RUN/DOS/RUN Ha, only one person in a million would find that funny.
Frink: Yes, we call that the Dennis Miller ratio.
... also, I can kill you with my brain.
man... U posted to the reply he was talking about...
tcpa SUX!!!!
This reminds me of the "hand on the wall" algorithm to escape certain labyrinths.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
These silly Dutch generative art people have gone and discovered that cities can be used as Turing machines, and they don't even know it!
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
Only if something possesses you to get in your car and drive the freeways.
This sig no verb.
I am going to think some more about some constraints that could be put on the problem so that it becomes more interesting.
Mods suck. Do you not grasp Douglas Adams jokes? Sheesh... and yes, it was bad.
At university, some 25 years ago, we went on Pi walks:
Start in some direction; when a junction is reached inspect the next digit of Pi: 1,2,3: turn left; 4,5,6: go straight on; 7,8,9: turn right; 0: turn back.
The results can be interesting.
For a change we did 'e' walks. You can use any irrational number.
In reality cities should be redesigned from scratch & people should be made flawless by genetic modification to reach the situation where the human compliance to the complexities of an algorithm as a psychogeographical device is perfect.
This is my favourite bit. This whole seems to be a little too much pseudo-intellectualizing fuelled by drugs and intellectual self-indulgence. College roommates spending WAY to much time exploring their earth-shattering ideas... time to sober up and read a book (in a genre your unfarmiliar with).
...walk-by shooting?
Personally, the implication that SlashDot conveys mathematical skills is absurd.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
hey, i'm not a creep, i'm a Geek... and donchu fergit it.
I like the idea of algorithm-based walks. But most of the examples given, while interesting from a chaotic standpoint, are too deterministic for my taste--that is, each time a walk is started, it will take the walker on exactly the same path. More interesting walks might be generated by starting with a random seed (say, wall clock time, the calendar date, or how many days until the milk in the fridge "expires").