14 DAY TRIAL // Google, M.I.T, and Umberto Eco are teaming up to build a cloud, literally. The Cloud is, to be precise, an ambitious architectural undertaking which they hope to have ready in time for the London Olympics in 2012. And here's the interesting part, the 'cloud' will be “fed by real time information from all over the world.” The project comes from M.I.T.'s Senseable City Lab and is now looking to secure funding, with micro-payments from the public, and sorting out other small details like building permits.
“The lightweight transparent tower, composed of a "cloud" of inflatable, light-emitting spheres, would create a spatial, three-dimensional display in the skies of London, fed by real time information from all over the world,” a statement issued by the project reads.
“The size of the Cloud will not be set in advance, but it will evolve based on the level of contributions received. The global "cloudraising" effort will be supported by platforms such as Facebook and Twitter; Google will provide advertising on YouTube and in search results.,” it continues.
The project certainly sounds impressive and the photos look great, but can they really pull it off by 2012? Just raising the money, if they rely solely on what are basically donations from the public, is bound to take a significant amount of time. A project of this size also has to get through a lot of red tape especially since it's directly linked to the Olympics location.
Still, the people behind it sound confident enough and Google probably wouldn't have gotten involved if it didn't believe it could actually be built in this time. Apart from the stunning architecture, the Cloud is interesting of its use of Internet data and especially of the real time web as an integral part of the concept. In fact, it was this aspect that interested Google in the first place.
“Google will provide useful and visually interesting content for the digital display, via Google tools such as Google Trends, Google Maps and Google Latitude. For instance, we could provide a custom feed of (aggregated and anonymous) searches made by Londoners during the Olympics to give a real time 'barometer' of the city's interests and mood,” Matt Brittin, Managing Director Google UK and Obi Felten, Head of Consumer Marketing Google EMEA said.
