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Sculpture to Reflect Campus Wireless Traffic

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the six-kinds-of-cool dept.

prostoalex writes "Ball State University, the top unwired school in the nation according to Intel survey, is set to unveil a sculpture that will reflect the wireless traffic on the campus network. From the article: 'Beginning Tuesday night at 8 p.m., as people log onto the Internet via Ball State's network, their online activity will appear as sound, color, patterns and images projected onto giant screens set up around the base of Shafer Tower, located in the middle of campus on McKinley Avenue.'"

7 of 84 comments (clear)

  1. Eavesdropping possibilities by CRCulver · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If the NSA can get usable info from blinking LEDs, what are the security risks of this scultpure? Nearly everyone knows that radio communications can be freely spied upon, we've all seen scanners that let you listen in to police band radio, but other methods of intercepting communications rarely come to the mind of Joe Average. TEMPEST and NONSTOP attacks have been well-researched for decades, but the closest they've gotten to general public knowledge is Neal Stephenson's use of the concept in Cryptonomicon .

    1. Re:Eavesdropping possibilities by phantomfive · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Anyone who considers unencrypted traffic passing over the internet as 'private' is naive. If the RIAA can look at your downloading habits, then there is little reason to expect the CIA, FBI, or your neighbor Alice isn't also looking at them. If people are worried about privacy then maybe this will help them realize they are not doing things in secret. There are things you can do to mitigate this, like using encrypted chats or proxy servers, so if it is really important there are things you can do to avoid a silly little sculpture. It is the other guys that you should really be worried about.

      --
      Qxe4
  2. packetbomb by apostrophesemicolon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    how does a port scan or packet flood show on the sculpture?

  3. Wall of Sheep! by gknoy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It would be interesting if they made it a wall of sheep (like at Defcon), but I imagine the backlash from said sheep (administration, professors, etc) would be significant.

  4. Welcome to Crystal Corp! by prajjwal · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Welcome to Crystal Corp. Starting from what once started on giant screens in Ball State University, we have made our technology assume the form of 3-dimensional Crystal balls, where you can gaze into to see sights you would never see otherwise. Some of our latest Crystal Balls: The Mind Ball: Tiny transmitters carried around by people in your office/university detect and transmit the most dominant thoughts they are having. See this collectively on our Mind Ball! The World Ball: Events in the world, translated directly from five major news channel's sites, encoded into images and sounds, and put into the World Ball! See what is going around in the world, by gazing into the ball (it takes practice, but you really can!) The Basket Ball: Every major game going on in the world, every player, the number of baskets scored, the team formation, boy this was a tough one! Give us in your ideas for other great balls and we will make you part of our ball testing program, access to our latest and greatest crystal balls, and a chance to become part of the Crystal Corps Beta testing team.

  5. Re:sculpture? by spectre_240sx · · Score: 2, Interesting

    True, this really is more of an installation.

  6. Re:sculpture? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Yup. Everyone at Ball State explore this link every day at noon: Spencer Tunnick (warning: this is considered fine art, so don't look if you're easily offended).