Building a Marauder's Map
I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.
The other day, I heard an interview with Daniel H. Wilson, the author of Where's My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived - and I now have to read this book. He talks about sci-fi technologies that are supposed to be commonplace now - flying cars, jet packs, George Jetson's moving sidewalks, etc. and explains why they never arrived.
While listening to the interview, I was also reminded of an article that I read a few years ago that hypothesized what what technology would need to be developed in order to build Harry Potter's Cloak of Invisibility. Unfortunately, I can't find the article now, but the premise worked something like this: Imagine taking a webcam and hooking it up to a laptop computer. Now if you hold the laptop in front of you and the webcam behind you, you can sort of make it look as if there's a hole in the middle of your body. So the idea is that you'd need a cloak made up of a number of tiny webcams and tiny projection devices. We're nowhere near that level of technology today, but perhaps in a number years we could be. Someone has, in fact, launched a patent application for this technology.
So, now that HP7 is out, I thought I'd put some thought into how to build one of my favourite Harry Potter items: A Marauder's Map. (A side note: From an Information Professional's perspective, a pensieve would be really handy tool for knowledge management purposes, but one of those would be a little bit harder to build). For those of you unfamiliar with the series, the marauder's map is a map of the Hogwarts school, but the map also has tiny ink dots with names next to them showing the locations of every individual at the school. The dots move around the map as the people move around the building.
If figure that it wouldn't be too difficult to create a mashup application of epaper, RFID chips and possibly Google Maps that could easily show the location of each of the RFID chips in real time on a map. The limitation is that it would only be of use in a controlled environment where individuals would agree to be tracked via an RFID chip. One application that I could see is at a conference environment - individuals could be given RFID chips on their ID badges (with their consent of course), for easier meeting up with colleagues. Or perhaps a school, hospital or care environment it could be used to keep track of individuals (again with their consent).
If we were to put ethical issues aside for this thought experiment, the MM could conceivably be used in an uncontrolled environment by replacing the RFID with a series of cameras, once the technology of facial recognition is enhanced beyond what it is today. But, then you'd be dealing with whole new issues of privacy. And nevermind what would happen if a map fell into the hands of a stalker.
So, there would definitely be a number of ethical issues to sort out, but from a technical point of view, a Marauder's Map could be done. And no, there wasn't another point to this posting....
Mischief Managed.
The other day, I heard an interview with Daniel H. Wilson, the author of Where's My Jetpack?: A Guide to the Amazing Science Fiction Future that Never Arrived - and I now have to read this book. He talks about sci-fi technologies that are supposed to be commonplace now - flying cars, jet packs, George Jetson's moving sidewalks, etc. and explains why they never arrived.
While listening to the interview, I was also reminded of an article that I read a few years ago that hypothesized what what technology would need to be developed in order to build Harry Potter's Cloak of Invisibility. Unfortunately, I can't find the article now, but the premise worked something like this: Imagine taking a webcam and hooking it up to a laptop computer. Now if you hold the laptop in front of you and the webcam behind you, you can sort of make it look as if there's a hole in the middle of your body. So the idea is that you'd need a cloak made up of a number of tiny webcams and tiny projection devices. We're nowhere near that level of technology today, but perhaps in a number years we could be. Someone has, in fact, launched a patent application for this technology.
So, now that HP7 is out, I thought I'd put some thought into how to build one of my favourite Harry Potter items: A Marauder's Map. (A side note: From an Information Professional's perspective, a pensieve would be really handy tool for knowledge management purposes, but one of those would be a little bit harder to build). For those of you unfamiliar with the series, the marauder's map is a map of the Hogwarts school, but the map also has tiny ink dots with names next to them showing the locations of every individual at the school. The dots move around the map as the people move around the building.
If figure that it wouldn't be too difficult to create a mashup application of epaper, RFID chips and possibly Google Maps that could easily show the location of each of the RFID chips in real time on a map. The limitation is that it would only be of use in a controlled environment where individuals would agree to be tracked via an RFID chip. One application that I could see is at a conference environment - individuals could be given RFID chips on their ID badges (with their consent of course), for easier meeting up with colleagues. Or perhaps a school, hospital or care environment it could be used to keep track of individuals (again with their consent).
If we were to put ethical issues aside for this thought experiment, the MM could conceivably be used in an uncontrolled environment by replacing the RFID with a series of cameras, once the technology of facial recognition is enhanced beyond what it is today. But, then you'd be dealing with whole new issues of privacy. And nevermind what would happen if a map fell into the hands of a stalker.
So, there would definitely be a number of ethical issues to sort out, but from a technical point of view, a Marauder's Map could be done. And no, there wasn't another point to this posting....
Mischief Managed.
Labels: just for fun
posted by Dave Hook at
11:39 AM
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