7. Technology - the Pillars of Wisdom? page 2

Relational relationships

Technology like the centralised multimedia database - at the heart of the system - which actually stores and retrieves sounds and images is, of course, functionally the Internet. Combine this with evolving relational database technology and the Garden could be built tomorrow. Even today, video on-demand trials currently underway throughout the world already make use of database engines which can store vast quantities of a variety of media (such as music, films and television programmes) individual items of which can be selected and delivered into one home (cf. garden), on-demand, through a TV set-top command box (cf Key).

The Living Garden would make use of something akin to this, but instead of a single centralised database, the system would be made up of a network of smaller - but linked - databases (similar to the distributed principle of the Internet, the world-wide network of computers). This would establish a virtual database which whilst functioning as a single entity, able to feed any garden, would be much more robust than that based upon a single `server'.

Viewer research

The garden's Viewers are, again, simply off-shots of existing or currently evolving technology: the Echoing Tree requires little beyond hidden loudspeakers, waterproofed to withstand the elements; the Pool of Reflection would simply throw images from a digital projector onto the surface of water (Hughes Corporation in the United States has recently developed a high-definition gas plasma projector able to do just this); and both the Stone Circle and the Time Sail referred to in the last chapter might be built around the next generation of thin-film transistor display panels, similar to those already found in high-end lap-top computers.

The only Viewer which could not be built in some form at present is the Censer. Even so, a British company is already marketing a device which can be used to `sniff' objects and by, analysing the vapours given off, record the unique profile (or `finger print') of any smell. This machine literally digitises smell and is already being used to create libraries of wine bouquet profiles. These records can then be used to identify an unknown vintage by matching its visual profile against one previously recorded - the machine as wine expert (such technology might even provide a novel means of sorting old socks?). If a `smelling machine' can be created, is it beyond the bounds of possibility to image some means of reversing the process? A device perhaps making use of a mass spectrometer and a cupboard-full of raw ingredients from the Periodic Table which could combine various elements (according to the recipe of a described by a profile) and re-synthesise a perfect copy of a scent recorded as a Living Book?

Webs and wires

As a distributed system, the different elements which combine to make up the Garden must be linked to each other in some way. Once more, most of the technology needed to do this is either already available or currently being developed. Bundles of fast, fibre optic cables (which offer the capacity or `bandwidth' needed to deliver large quantities of digital information) would carry signals from authoring tool-to-database, and then from database-to-garden. Where cables could not be laid, digital satellite telecommunications systems would beam data directly between sites.

Once within a garden, controlling the process of relaying a Living Book to the relevant Viewer and Keyholder would be handled through well established client-server protocols from the telecommunications world for retrieving and sending information to a particular site.