[dorkbotsea-blabber] Brainstorming Emergent Communication Procotols

[Heurihermilab]

> Years ago the Exploratorium had a travelling science exhibit on Chaos, and
> had the perfect device:  an array of "Teddy Ruxpin" toys nailed to a wall.
> These are teddybears which, when spoken to, will mumble a similar
> distorted reply.
>
> Just imagine clapping or yelling.  The wall of teddies breaks into
> murmuring as waves of delayed/distored sounds are propagated between
> nearest neighbors.

I'd always hoped the Furbys of the same period would be able to
capture small bits of sound and regurgitate them on occasion; at least
that would justify them being banned from CIA/NSA/etc premises a while
back...

Details of the protocols would be interesting -- can an individual
Ruxpin know how many others are on the line?  Are there Doppler or
other phase effects on the incoming infrared?  Can you fuzz their
inputs with a mirror, or a candle and some well-chosen gestures?  How
complex a finite state machine can we run in a Ruxpin, anyway?  It's
not at all unlikely that there will be emergent effects from having
bunches of them, but I suspect they may require a well-chosen
networking rule, or two, to be viable/interesting in groups.

It would be awful cool if there were interesting interactions, however
unplanned, between multiple projects in the exhibition.  Or perhaps
they will be affected by the crowds breaking up the usually-simple
optical environment -- everybody wear reflective clothing!

cj.