Communicating by sound and chemicals

"The IDs also provide information about each device's manufacturer. The result of this live scan is shown on the phone's screen. Each ID triggers a unique audio output that mixes with the others nearby. The resulting sound is played out of the speaker. The sounds are deterministic - that is if the same people are around, it will produce the same sound. Imagine each of us exuding a personal sound. What would you sound like? How do we collectively sound?" asks  Eric Paulos, Intel.

Protocase accordingly worked with Intel to build the speakers. Eric Paulos writes " As urban computing researchers, it is important that we are able to build real prototypes that can be deployed in actually city landscapes. That means designing and building quality and industrially hardened artifacts. Many of our designs are also challenging fabrication designs. Protocase has worked with us closely on several projects and in every case have consistently delivered exceptional final products that have exceeded our needs and leveraged our research. We are happy to have found such as tremendously valuable resource to work with and will most certainly work with them again in the future. "

Nice recommendation for Protocase, but what happened Intel? Eric Paulos never finished the story. Was it Cacophony? Harmony? New music? A spy check on Intel chip users? Come to that, Protocase never described their problems or how they solve them for their red speaker enclosure.

Chemicals work well too
Fascinated as Gaberlunzie is by the ingenuity of the mobile phone as aversatile communications route, the use of plants for insect communication is also intriguing.  Dutch ecologist Roxina Soler and her colleagues have discovered that herbivorous insects above and below ground communicate with each other by using the plant as the medium.

Subterranean insects issue chemical warning signals of their presence via the plant leaves alerting aboveground insects  that the plant is already ‘occupied’. Leaf-eating insects prefer plants that are not occupied by subterranean root-eating insects. Subterranean insects emit chemical signals via the leaves of the plant, which warn the aboveground insects about their presence. The messaging enables spatially-separated insects to avoid each other, so that they do not unintentionally compete for the same plant.

It has already been discovered that different types of above ground insects develop slowly if they feed on plants that have subterranean residents and vice versa. It seems that a mechanism has developed via natural selection,  enabling root and leaf eaters to detect each other, avoiding unnecessary competition.

Using the green "chemical phone line' subterranean insects can also communicate to parasitic wasps, the natural enemy of caterpillars. Parasitic wasps lay their eggs inside leaf eating insects and are also alerted by the volatile signals emitted by the leaves, as these reveal where they can find a good host for their eggs.  Studied only in a few systems it is still unclear how widespread this phenomenon is, but it sounds to Gaberlunzie like the root eaters have the winning wicket.

Sources: http://www.protocase.co.uk/
http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOA_7DLG9H_Eng