By David Pescovitz
There’s a bomb inside Eric Paulos’ storage space. remote spaces over the internet. His work at UC
It’s not your typical homebrew explosive, though. Berkeley bled into years of collaboration with infa-
This is an information bomb. If you happen to walk mous San Francisco machine performance group
by when Paulos fires it off, you may not even notice Survival Research Laboratories. In 1997, Paulos and
right away. But your wristwatch will probably stop. SRL director Mark Pauline invited anonymous web
Your credit cards certainly will no longer be read- users from around the globe to remotely aim and
able. Your cellphone will instantly become a paper- fire a massive air launcher loaded with concrete-
weight. Carrying a laptop computer? Hopefully, you filled soda cans. It was the first time lethal machinery
have a recent backup. With the press of a single was operated over the internet. Paulos’ own tech-art
button, the I-Bomb unleashes a powerful electro- collective, Experimental Interaction Unit, has exhibited
magnetic pulse that kills electronic devices and cor- around the world.
rupts all storage media within several meters. At Intel Research, Paulos directs the Urban
Paulos has demonstrated the I-Bomb at places Atmospheres program, a group exploring tech-
like the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, but nology in the cityscape, from Bluetooth-enabled
he’d be ill-advised to show it off at work. Not to say phones to ad hoc networks of tiny sensors. While
that his colleagues wouldn’t appreciate it. In fact, many companies are developing urban computing
projects as unusual and provocative as the I-Bomb applications — from location-enabled restaurant
landed Paulos his job in the first place. Still, he recommendation systems to real-world buddy
works for a company where fried chips are particu- lists — Paulos says he prefers to look between the
larly distasteful. cracks in the asphalt for research topics. After all,
entire conferences are already devoted to the likes of
A BIZARRE MACHINE LABLET location-enabled services and Geoweb technology.
Paulos is a computer scientist at Intel Research “There are certainly moments in life for produc-
Berkeley, a corporate “lablet” in the penthouse tivity and efficiency, but there are also moments for
of a downtown office building where a dozen or wonderment and reflection,” he says. “I’d like to use
so scientists explore the edges of computing and technology to celebrate non-places, non-events,
networking technology. When Paulos joined the lab non-activities that actually matter a great deal to
several years ago, the first thing he did was set up the emotional experience of urban life.”
a machine shop with lathes, scopes, and assorted
prototyping tools. The laser cutter took a bit more ONE MAN’S TRASH IS ANOTHER MAN’S
wrangling but is finally due to arrive this week. A RESEARCH PROJECT
computer science Ph.D., Paulos can hack C++ with Urban Atmospheres aims to illuminate the most sub-
the best of them, but he’s really a lifelong maker who tle characteristics of city living, like the relationships
made a career out of building bizarre machines. you have with people you see every morning at the
As a graduate student, he designed groundbreaking train station but never acknowledge, the invisible telerobots that enabled people to physically explore cellular infrastructure you move across, even the
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