Behind the top windows, and visible from several streets and freeways away, will be four giant illuminated orange disks, each nine feet in diameter, and entirely composed of LEDs. A stripe through each disk will rotate every six seconds: each disk has four possible positions, which translates to eight bits of information across all four disks. Using this simple semaphore to encode letters of the alphabet, the four disks will transmit a secret message at the astoundingly slow rate of 10 bytes per minute (60 billion times slower than the 3GHZ processor in most personal computers). Rubin is considering offering a prize to the first person patient enough to decode and identify the source text of the secret semaphore message, though his larger goal is more philosophical. “My initial impulse arose out of trying to take digital communications technology, which is Adobe’s business, and make it visible.
Behind the top windows, and visible from several streets and freeways away, will be four giant illuminated orange disks, each nine feet in diameter, and entirely composed of LEDs. A stripe through each disk will rotate every six seconds: each disk has four possible positions, which translates to eight bits of information across all four disks. Using this simple semaphore to encode letters of the alphabet, the four disks will transmit a secret message at the astoundingly slow rate of 10 bytes per minute (60 billion times slower than the 3GHZ processor in most personal computers). Rubin is considering offering a prize to the first person patient enough to decode and identify the source text of the secret semaphore message, though his larger goal is more philosophical. “My initial impulse arose out of trying to take digital communications technology, which is Adobe’s business, and make it visible.
—>>http://www.adobe.com/uk/designcenter/thinktank/livingskins/
genius :)
Duane Nickull has more about it at his blog http://technoracle.blogspot.com/
In particular, http://technoracle.blogspot.com/2006/09/semaphore-earlier-analysis-is-wrong.html may be of interest.
Mike