Panoptica - A project I intend to begin devoting more time to. The name is inspired from an architectural anomaly called the Panopticon, which was a design for a prison invented in the late 1800's by a man named Jeremy Bentham (not the same man who did the PIC Micro TCP/IP Stack). The central concept employed in the architecture was that of total, omni-present awareness of the prison occupants. Today, in our digital world, we might call that "Total Information Awareness" - this is the concept that I employ in all systems design - capture everything that moves and, then figure our what and where its useful and how best to integrate it later on. Employ a google-esque peta-scale backend capable of the necessary throughput and capacity available in both local as well as cloud configurations then, build the application environment on top of that substrate, that foundation. If you start with Iron and Steel no matter what your purpose, you will always be able to construct that skyscraper that illuminates the city skyline. To that end, Panoptica will use advanced, ultra-aesthetic information visualization wherever possible employing a parallel processing backend and a relative-layout and positioning engine so that, for every edge connected to a hyper-graph/fractal data node, positioning calculations have already been partially computed at the moment data is inserted or an edge is bound into the graph. This ensures exceedingly fast presentation capabilities with beautiful, dazzling aesthetics. Custom FPGA and ASIC hardware will power the backend, for an experience second to none - a candyland of gleeming, glistening, aesthetic beauty that at the same time, will keep us, at all levels in our society, free from fear of the digital ghosts and vampires that hunt our hearts and minds in the middle of the night.
The first set of features will be geared toward both personal and corporate monitoring of their Cellular Telephones, the activity being sent to and from each cell-phone at a general, high level. The world needs this now more than ever for both Cororations, which already have access to these kinds of advanced monitoring systems, albeit at a very steep price, as well as individuals, who are the ones without the tools or knowledge to be forewarned. I recently reviewed my cellular bill and found that, like clockwork, somehow my phone was sending MASSIVE -- MASSIVE -- SERIOUSLY MASSIVE amounts of data each and every day. First in the early AM (around 9) and, then again around 1/2 AM at night. By massive I mean 200 - 300 MB of raw data transmission. That's roughly a feature length film when encoded as MP4 or AA4 data formats. Where this data went and what it contained, I can only guess but, I only have had "ring-tone" applications and games installed and, I've never performed tasks on my phone on a routine basis like that. We've raced toward this glistening panacea that is technology without a care or concern in the world and nothing but instant pleasure and gratification held in our hearts and minds. It's time we wake up, personal and, more importantly, national security have been put in Jeapordy.
Brian Abbott
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