Pigeons to Blog Pollution

Strolls writes "In an release which conjures images of avian borg, a press release tells of plans to release pigeons equipped with cellphones and GPS so that they can "blog" air pollution data. The plan is the brainchild of Beatriz da Costa of the University of California Digital Arts Research Network and is scheduled as part of the inter-Society for Electronic Arts' annual symposium in San Jose in August. Da Costa has previously been involved with RFID roaches."

Blog?

[MustardMan]

How is this blogging, exactly? It's bad enough we have eight zillion blog derivative buzzwords, but when they are completely mis-applied it's even more annoying. Next step: record dogs' farts and call it podcasting. Then again, it might be more interesting than a lot of podcasts already out there...

Burgle their phones.

[CyricZ]

Soon enough people will shoot the birds, steal their phones, and then sell those phones.

Blog?

[Eightyford]

Why would anyone use a word like "blog" when it is not needed. Especially in this case where it makes no friggen sense.

It could very well be considered blogging.

[CyricZ]

It depends what you define "blogging" as. Do you consider the frequent posting of short blurbs of information to a publically-accessible web site to be blogging? If so, then this would indeed qualify as blogging.

Re:Blog?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, languages evolve, that is undisputable; but that doesnt mean you should sit back and watch it become a steaming pile of shit. blogging, podcasting, l33t, txt, and other language of that ilk at de-evolving english. "do u lke it whn i blog 2 u lke ths? y not? tlk evlvs m8, gt ovr it." you fucking retard

Re:It could very well be considered blogging.

[CyricZ]

Again, it depends on what you consider "blogging" to be.

Nothing about the particular definition I supplied suggests that it has to be a human (or even a pigeon) posting the information.

You might suggest that a blog entry would have to have meaning. But that's not necessarily true. A blog in Chinese, for instance, would look far more like gibberish to somebody who only speaks English than a PHP-generated string of numerals.

Re:Blogging Quality

[ToasterofDOOM]

That's a hell of a lot more scientific and insightful than 90%+ of all the human blogs combined already! You're off to a good start! On the other hand, if the internet had any more mindless droll I'm sure the Earth would implode into a literal black hole of knowledge and all that is good and pure.

Re:It could very well be considered blogging.

[kfg]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and, even without reading the article, assert that the pigeons themselves are not "posting short blurbs of information" anywhere.

And that, my friend, is why you should RTFA.

KFG

STOP USING BLOG FOR EVERYTHING

[jigjigga]

They will submit data, they wont blog. I guarantee the data collected wont be posted in threads like blogs. 1 pigeon won't post "ZOMG teh air is teh bad!" with another saying "its teh worse next door" It will be collected and processed. If it ins't, its useless. I am not trying to be a troll, just someone who is getting sick of the word blog. I am happy the masses have discovered that they too can contribute to the internet, but they need to realize there is more going on than blogging! ZOMG T3h BLOG!!!ocho!

Re:It could very well be considered blogging.

[Vellmont]

Again, it depends on what you consider "blogging" to be.


Exactly. I consider blogging to be when children eat ice cream too fast and get an ice-cream headache.

Seriously, can't we all agree on some basic definition of blogging rather than play these dumb word games? You've taken the word and completely redfined it so it no longer resembles the original word. Pigeons making blog entries through data gathered from devices attatched to them? I think you've broken some basic laws of logic about who does what, since obviously the pigeon doesn't actually post any information itself. If you want to define it that way, hey great. But don't expect anyone to understand what the hell you're talking about anymore.

Re:Burgle their phones.

[Lijemo]

Soon enough people will shoot the birds, steal their phones, and then sell those phones.

I haven't RTFA, but I highly doubt they are strapping regular commercial cell-phones, complete with push-buttons and display screens, to the birds.

more likely, it's just a single device, that can read pollution data, get a GPS reading, and transmit this information over the cell-phone network to a pre-programmed number. I highly doubt such a device would be much use to anyone who stole it, or have much value on the black market.