The New York Talk Exchange

The New York Talk Exchange, that's right--not Stock, it's Talk--is MIT's latest publicly announced project. Created with the help of AT&T, BT (British Telecom), and Yahoo!, the program monitors the incoming and outgoing calls and internet communications of New Yorkers.




The whole idea of this makes me kind of scared--like, when did MIT tell New Yorkers that the were logging their transmissions?--but when I saw what pretty visuals were created from the data, I relaxed a bit. Makes me think if the PATRIOT Act included spiffy 3D recreations of their wiretaps I would be a little more OK with it... Right.




Anyway, Orwellian or not, the fruits of the MIT team's labor is on display in MoMA until May and, once again, available at any time here. You can read the AP article written about the exhibition here.



I'll leave you with what I think is the most interesting fact gleaned from this info: "From Manhattan, the most-called city is London, which represents about 8 percent of all calls overseas. The second most-called city from Manhattan is Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, with more than 5 percent of all calls."

Makes you think...

P.s. In the first image/link, I love the time of night--must be like 4am or something, when the communication dies out altogether for like a split second. Incredible.