Monday 8 April 2013

hertzian photography

BLDGBLOG shares and expands on an interesting proposal by the London Economist that suggests that the extant array of antennae and satellite dishes and other shadow-casting receivers and transmitters could be used as a passive, supplemental radar to track aircraft and light up the run-way.
Such auroral imaging is like earlier snap-shots focused by WiFi signals or radio-telescopes, augmenting and translating what is visible to the human-eye. The discussion makes me think of another development, which although less of a technical challenge for the pilots, is nonetheless representative of a bigger technical divide: a number of systems, on a common platform, are coming into place to alleviate a very democratic and local problem, that of finding a parking-space. Some very creative and clever solutions are on offer, but I am wary over another common and unaccommodating layer of haves and have-nots, not redressed by leveraging the conditions that created it.