This page is about making the hexayurts information rich at several levels.

The basic strategy is to use a variety of media and formats to make information about the hexayurts and about survival and recovery available to affected people.

I. Print useful text on the panels.

II. When possible and desirable, print the panels with embedded RFID tags.

III. Arrangement of hexayurts into patterns readable from a distance or from an aeriel view.

Issues arising from this strategy:

I.

1. In what langauge or dialect to you print the panel text? 2. Should there be standing "books" waiting in warehouses, ready for shipment? If so, what is the most useful text to put on the most generic panel? 3. First aid. Hygiene.

II.

1. Expense is a major issue for RFIDs. 2. Security is even more important. RFIDs are hackable, and they can be used as a platform for spreading viruses or malware to other systems and databases (citation needed). Could pirates exploit this by using the info on the RFIDs for ill purposes? Yes.

III.

1. Think Semacode (link) or Kaywa's QR Code (link). Not human-eye readable, but from a distance ketai cams can discern massive amounts of information by the configuration of black and white pixels. What could physical camp configs tell relief workers? 2. Think "eye in the sky". If other communication channels fail, the arrangement of yurts in the camp could communicate information to aerial cams as 2-D barcodes.

Gallery

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• File:Aerial view of camp works like QR code.
• File:Panel2pic.PNG
• File:This is a standard printed panel. It incorporates at least 2 points from the strategy: eye readable; machine readable through barcodes and RFID.
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• File:Sketch of kirkyan concept for hexayurt camps. Kirkyan hexayurts are virtual/real and changes in one environment causes the kirkyan to respond by changing itself as needed in the other.

Miscelleny

[from an email, 2 Nov 06]

This has got me thinking about something I haven't messed with in about 10 years -- fractals. Code iterating on multiple levels, in many media, redundant but site-specific. You read it from the air, from the hut-level, and even microscopically on the electronic level -- the info is there, ready to be pulled instantly by human or machine user.

Now the sticky part -- where does this all fall down? Does it fall down in the expense (time) of re-writing RFIDs with new relevant info every couple of days? Does it fall down when the warlords use cheapie read/writers to steal info or vandalize medical records in HY camps? Does it fall down in the GREAT expense of trying to make these things truly kirkyan -- which will require smart materials (like memory plastics), servos, and a distributed network that can handle the number crunching the HY will need to make to altar their physical form? Does it fall down when some Sharia upstart takes issue with some built in assumption within some medical advise printed on a panel, and he tears the village down and starts lobbing off toes and nipples?

Cultural matters aside, the practicalities of managing enough information to make this HY extreme informated versions of themselves is daunting and probably undesireable by anyone but extremely specialized and monied forces -- like special ops, and folks working on plans for manned lunar colonies.

Back to basics. The yurt is a book. At every practical level it bleeds info. --Woody 16:47, 5 November 2006 (PST)

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