If you were worried that snail mail was a dying art, then fear not – it’s making a comeback. The project by Bournemouth University’s Vicky Isley and Paul Smith is perhaps taking the well-known nickname for letters sent over land a little too literally, though – it’s involved fitting three snails with electronic devices that will allow them to receive and transmit messages from sensors. It’s called Real Snail Mail.
The project has been met with much amusement, with many people heading to the official website to sign up and attempt to send a message. Brain Green posted on his blog that it’s a “nerdorific idea”, a notion probably shared by quite a few people!
The tiny radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on the shells of the snails enable the snails to receive messages when they slide past an electronic reader. The snails then physically carry the message around on their backs until they pass a second reader. When the reader and RFID pick each other up, the messages is forwarded from the snail to the reader and is sent back over the web to its destination.
This is all part of a “slow art” project which will be showcased in August at the computer graphics conference, Siggraph, in Los Angeles. The idea behind it is to encourage email users to consider the technology behind services they take for granted. Since the snails move at a rate of about 0.03mph in pretty much any direction they want to, whether there’s a sensor there or not, there’ll certainly be time in between messages to do so!
So far, only 14 messages have been successfully transmitted by the snails, with 10 being by the hard-working Austin, or Agent 002 as is painted on its shell.
The three snails have their work profiles posted on the site, which shows their status (available or carrying message), number of deliveries made and average delivery time. So far, one snail is lagging far being – Agent 003, or Muriel, hasn’t made one delivery yet.
If there isn’t already a dole system for snails, someone better get on it because Muriel will probably be signing on pretty soon.
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