Blanketed in pavement, American cities can seem a social and architectural palimpsest, callously rewritten by every generation. This month, however, researchers at New York University's Interactive Telecommunications Program will launch Neighborhood Web to let Net historians put an indelible mark on public space by allowing them to tack Web pages to particular buildings. With a GPS transmitter and a handheld computer folded into one device, the project will serve up Web pages to a viewer based on their precise location and create a rowdy public museum of life on (and off) the street.
"When you walk around New York, what you see is what expensive, world-class architects want you to see," says ITP professor Nick West, who is organizing the project. "With [our device], you can see what your buddy, a historian, or the publisher of the New York Press [a free, alternative weekly] has to show you. It democratizes the city."
Like a hybrid walking tour/peanut gallery/city guide, the project is part of ITP's electronic communities project, called "Yorb." Neighborhood Web, funded by a research grant from Viacom, is not being developed commercially and will begin testing 10 August, focusing only on the West Village.
The project follows the "whole philosophy" of the ITP program, says West, by using exclusively off-the-shelf equipment. For the viewing device, West uses a US$150 GPS locator plugged into the serial port of a handheld Epson computer with no keyboard (about $1,000).
Because the military purposely reduces the accuracy of its GPS signal, West uses a "differential" GPS transmitter on top of the Empire State Building that beams out error corrections over FM frequency, giving them a precise reading up to 10 feet.
As users traipse along the blocks and bitumen, the GPS transmitter sends out a constant location signal. The signal is then matched at the ITP server with a database of available pages sorted by location. The corresponding page would be downloaded to the computer over a cellular modem connection. The project, however, faces the stiff challenge of creating enough Web pages to satisfy even the most accidental tourist in Manhattan. In response, West hopes to call on the student volunteers to bolster the system with content.
Seth Kamil, head of the Big Onion walking tours of Manhattan, says a Web-based tour could only work in certain areas. "West Village is a good place because, as dynamic as it is, it's not changing day-by-day like the other areas" such as the Lower East Side or Chinatown, Kamil says. In the time it takes a guide to go through the editorial process, it would be out of date, he asserts.
If history is more about stories than facts, Kamil, a graduate student in American studies at Columbia, stresses the importance of a human interaction and patience. At the Jefferson Courthouse (now a public library), "People don't want to read 10 to 15 pages about [it]," Kamil says. "But they will listen to me talk about it for 10 to 15 minutes."
Ultimately, West sees the Neighborhood Web project developing in more adrenaline-inducing directions. He imagines a Laser Tag game in which contestants could be monitored and tracked on the device. But he's quick to assure that only people who wanted to play would be tagged by the unit. "There are privacy issues," says West. "You don't want stalkers to run rampant."
From the Wired News New York Bureau at FEED magazine.
