Concept

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.

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.

University of Babel

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.

Moving onwards

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. They can send this Me to the universities where the teachers again provide the environment.

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.