University of Babel
The University of Babel is about communication between students in Europe. Students will learn about others cultures by sending messages to other universities and other students individually. The University of Babel isn't a physical university, it is an organization which helps universities in setting up the communication with others.
In this document we will lay out this concept. For this document you need to have some understanding of what an environment means to understand things.
What is our goal?
The goal of the University of Babel is to let students communicate in a better way by teaching them about other cultures.
In the current world not all people learn about other cultures. They grow up in their own culture, in their own country and hardly get in touch with other cultures. Because people immigrate we can see a little bit of the other culture, we think. But this way of learning is not good because it lacks the environment.
The goal of the University of Babel is about starting a conversation between cultures and students and their point of view on the world. We let students send messages to other universities to teach others about their way of living. We weave the environment back in via the teachers on the university so the messages actually have a meaning and can get understood.
In this way students will learn the multiple layers of a culture instead of only the outside of it. This knowledge is important to understand another persons point of view. With this knowledge students will be able to communicate better with people from other cultures. Thus we create an environment at the universities which supports students in reaching their goals. One of those goals might be solving the problems of the world. This is possible because people can understand each other. This is what we call love, peace and happiness, which is what we hope this will lead to.
This way we also release the stress between the different countries and cultures, native people and the immigrants inside a country get to know each other. We also build bridges between the universities and let the students of the different countries work together on projects and get to know more people.
For whom is it meant?
The University of Babel aims at setting up a network for communication, create material for universities and support the universities in setting up the project.
The main users will actually be students; they will be using the medium to communicate with others. These are people who want to be free in what they explore, what they learn. They are young and are exploring how to communicate with other people of their age.
Another group we will support are the teachers. They have knowledge about their profession and can teach that to students. The teachers need to know or to research the background -the environment- about the messages that go around in the university. We support these teachers in the same way we help the students. We let them communicate with other people of their age and interest; the teachers from other universities. Because they also learn about other cultures and get to see other point of views they can learn how to help their students in a better way.
What is it all about?
The concept exists of a BabelLanguage, BabelBacteria, a BabelTower, a BabelWall, a BabelArm and a BabelPrimer. Messages will be spread between universities in Europe. Students can read an write these messages where teachers will give the necessary information about the environment of the message. Students and teachers can also send personal messages via the same medium.
BabelLanguage
The students and teachers from the universities use a common language to communicate with each other. This language isn't connected to a country so nobody might be offended when their language isn't chosen or when it is used in a wrong way when it is chosen. Therefore we use Esperanto to communicate between the different people. The Esperanto is written in the Georgian alphabet instead of the Latin alphabet for the same reasons as for choosing the language. The Georgian alphabet also has the advantage of having a letter for every phoneme, a so called phonemic orthography.
BabelBacteria
The languages are not written using ink, we use bacteria to display and write the messages. When writing a message you don't use any pen(cil) but BabelBacteria. You dip your finger in a cup of BabelBacteria and write on you arm, see BabelArm. After writing you wash your hands in a cup with water. This is needed so the BabelBacteria won't get on any surface when not writing as it could be confused with text.
The BabelBacteria which are used for writing will spread the message to the BabelTower. They do this by giving the message to another BabelBacteria close. This way the message travels on the ground and walls towards the BabelTower. As is it too complex to handle multiple tasks the BabelBacteria them self don't travel, only the message travels from BabelBacteria to BabelBacteria.
Furthermore there are read-only bacteria which are programmed to organize in a certain pattern and change color to display the messages. These can not be used for writing and are living on the BabelWalls and BabelArms.
BabelTower
The BabelTower -not to be confused with the "Tower of Babel"- is a tower placed in top of a university. This tower is changed according to the culture of the country and university and is inspired by religion. In most Western countries this tower might look like the tower of a church, in Arabic countries it will be more like a minaret.
The BabelTower will take care of the communication between universities by sending and receiving messages to and from other BabelTowers. This communication can go via sound for close universities or via GSM signals for longer distances. Furthermore the BabelTower will communicate with bacteria inside the university to display messages on BabelWalls and BabelArms.
All messages received by the BabelTower from its own students and teachers will be processed by a redaction first. This is to make sure no garbage messages get send or personal messages get send out as general messages by accident.
BabelWall
Inside the university the walls or boards are used to display the messages. BabelBacteria live on the BabelWalls and show the message when told so by the BabelTower. BabelWalls can be used for general messages or messages about a certain subject.
General messages might be displayed in the university restaurant, the central hall or the cinema. These general messages might be about news from other universities and countries, festivals going on, etc. These general messages are displayed for one minute each to the multiple messages can be displayed.
BabelWalls are also used as boards for a certain subject. Teachers teach students around these BabelWalls about a certain subject. The teacher can give some keywords or a certain subject and then only messages around those words will be displayed on the BabelWall. The messages on these BabelWalls are displayed for one minute each, but the teacher can postpone the disappearing of the message and can freeze a message on the BabelWall.
BabelArm
The interface for writing messages is the BabelArm. You can write messages using the BabelBacteria on the outside of the BabelArm. The message you write here gets transmitted to the BabelTower which in turn sends it out to all universities. On the other universities this gets displayed on a BabelWall.
The BabelArm can also be used to write personal messages. When writing on the inside of your arm you can send messages to other students or teachers. These messages have a personal nature and are not meant for public viewing. The message will be send using the same techniques but will only be displayed on the BabelArm of the recipient.
The BabelArm consists of a kind of petri dish on nano scale which is wrapped around your arm. This petri dish can be taken off your own arm so can disable receiving messages of you don't want to, for example when you are sleeping. You need to take it off when showering or washing your arms.
On the outside of your BabelArm you can write a general message with the BabelBacteria, you'll see the message appearing directly where you write. After each line -when you arm is full- you touch your elbow to send that line. A special bacteria on that spot will recognize the message and send it to the BabelTower and then the message will disappear from your own arm. You can immediately start writing on your arm again and in this way send multiple lines of text. When you want to erase a part of the message you can wipe it out with a part of your finger or hand which isn't dipped into the BabelBacteria.
Writing on the inner side of the BabelArm will transmit a personal message. The writing will be the same as the general message with the only difference that you have to write the name of the person you want to send it to after the message. This name needs to be followed by the name of the university the person is in case that this is not your own.
Read-only BabelBacteria live on the inner side of your BabelArm where they wait to receive a signal from the BabelTower. When a personal message is received they will display the message on the inner side of your BabelArm.
BabelPrimer
As not everyone can read the BabelLanguage yet we need something to learn this. Therefore we have the BabelPrimer, a digital book learning the reader to read and write in the BabelLanguage. The BabelPrimer is a digital book in a physical form which dynamically adjusts to the readers knowledge and questions using nanotechnology.
All the students and teachers get a BabelPrimer as long as they need it to learn the BabelLanguage. During the implementation phase people can write and read in their native language. This will then first be translated into Esperanto and transliterated into Georgian by the BabelTower. This causes the system to work a little bit slower in this implementation phase.
Teachers
The teachers in the university have a very important role in this whole process. The environment of the messages is lacking because the messages is transmitted to the other university with another culture. The teachers -or supervisor- will help the students here by explaining the environment or the background stories behind the messages.
Implementation
For the IDSS2008 presentation we create the BabelBacteria, the BabelWall and BabelArm. The BabelTower is not interesting for our current project as we want to focus on the interaction with the students. The BabelLanguage also isn't that interesting as there already is a suitable language for our purpose.
BabelBacteria
We use finger paint as the BabelBacteria. You dip your finger in a cup of finger paint, write on your BabelArm and when you're finished you can wash your fingers in a cup with water.
BabelWall
The BabelWall is made out of large pieces of cardboard. On these cardboards we write with marker pen a message in Esperanto:
Etime la vorto kaligrafio estas kunmetaĵo el du grekaj vortoj: kalos esta bela kaj grafos esta skribo.
But then using the Georgian alphabet. This message from the Turkish university is send to the Swedish university during the presentation.
BabelArm
The BabelArm is created using aluminum net covered with newspaper paper, foil plastic and cotton. You can write on this arm with the BabelBacteria (finger paint).
For the experience during the presentation we're using only the foil plastic to write on and read from.
Scenario
Armağan Kösecioğlu from the Kadir Has University in Turkey is in room Z01 working on a project about calligraphy. He is working together with students from the Mälardalen University in Sweden. Armağan wants to send a sentence to the Swedish students explaining where the word calligraphy comes from.
Armağan dips his right index finger in a cup of bacteria standing on his table and starts to write on his left arm. Armağan can already read and write BabelLanguage and thus starts to write the following message:
Etime la vorto kaligrafio ..
The letters appear on his arm as he is writing with his index finger. Now his arm is already full but the message isn't finished yet. Armağan touches his left wrist and the text disappears from his arm. He continues with the rest:
.. estas kunmetaĵo el du ..
But again his arm is full. He repeats the same process of touching his wrist and starts over with the last two lines of the sentence:
.. grekaj vortoj: kalos esta ..
.. bela kaj grafos esta skribo.
He touches his wrist one more time, the text disappears and he dips his finger in a cup of water standing next to the cup with bacteria. He now continues to work on his animation which he has to finish before 13.00. Hurry..
The bacteria on his arm spread the message via other bacteria on the ground and walls in the university towards the minaret on top of the building. There the message will get send via GSM signals to Sweden.
The Christian church tower on top of the Mälardalen University receive the GSM signals. The tower then activate bacteria on the wall in a room. These bacteria start to order them selfs in a pattern.
Andreas Bernstein from the Mälardalen University is sitting in room L354 with other students working on a project about calligraphy. The walls around him display a script with round letters. This gives a nice atmosphere in the room.
Suddenly the text on one of the walls start to disappear and a new text comes up. Andreas looks at the wall and reads the text. It comes from the Turkish university which is participating in the same project. The text reads (in a Georgian alphabet):
Etime la vorto kaligrafio estas kunmetaĵo el du grekaj vortoj: kalos esta bela kaj grafos esta skribo.
Andreas now knows that the word calligraphy comes from the Greek words kallos and graphẽ, which means "beauty writing".
Version 2
Media companies
The universities can also receive messages from media companies and include them in the messages. Here it is also very important that the teachers provide the environment / background story. Media companies also can receive messages from the universities and broadcast them on different channels like tv, radio, newspapers, etc.
Gods and Me's
The gods which are in the clouds have their idea about how people should live. This is the Me of the gods.
Jan told us about Chicada (Chicada @ Flickr), a bug from the Brazilian forest which some people believe produces sounds to activate trees to act in a certain way.