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Bees in PCs

B. S. Raghavan

WE HAVE all heard of ants in pants, but bees in PCs? Wait a minute, not just bees, but ants as well, and not just in PCs, but running the Internet? Is there no end to surprises in this knowledge age, cranked up by information technology? The instan t answer is: No sir! Read on, for once!

Researchers in the University of California, were bothered by the unimaginable load mounting on optical fibres, airwaves and bandwidths at lightning speed, thanks to the astronomical growth in the number of domains, portals, websites, e-mailers, e-tailer s, mobile phones, handhelds, pocket PCs, and what have you. A time was bound to come, they reasoned, when the entire thing would go bust, with none being able to access anything.

Already, when a major sports, movie or media event is on, there is such pressure on the website, that it virtually collapses. Witness what happened when Encyclopedia Britannica opened its new site: For days, it was unavailable, smothered by millions clic king it. This kind of snafu is the result, according to the University of California's cogitating caliphs, of centralised control of the entire Net and access system.

Is there any system in nature where innumerable players manage it with their duties and functions, farmed out by an orderly framework of rules and modes of delivery, instituted close to where they are needed? If you are a regular watcher of the Discovery and/or National Geographic channel, you would have been taken with great ceremony into anthills and beehives. You would have noticed how a tremendous variety of inter-connected activities is managed effortlessly and spontaneously by thousands of individ ual bio-units with no centralised command. (There is no doubt that the ruler is a queen in both cases, but she just lies there laying eggs, and gives free rein to all the rest.)

Eureka, cried out the archetypal Archimedeses of America, springing like rockets out of their, well, may be, not bathtubs but bean-bags. They are furiously working on a software which will make it unnecessary to go to a centralised source for pages, down loads and the like, but position them nearest to locations where they are needed. They have aptly named it `Ants and Bees'.

This is not the end to the exciting things that are going on. The pulp of the lowly potato has come in handy as an electrolyte to power your PC, without your having to be tormented by the Electricity Board. You can double your role as a couch potato with wires from your PC sticking into a real potato. Like it? Read on.

The time has come when you do not even need to exert yourself to press the buttons on your remote control. Just audibly whisper to the TV, ``Louder'', to increase the volume, ``MTV'', and presto! your favourites will be gyrating before you. Even whisperi ng is strenuous? Not to worry, strap the latest electronic helmet to your head, and simply think your commands, and they will be executed telepathically. Your neighbour is making a racket with MP3? Think ``off with power'', and his music is muzzled forth with.

Your PC is too much of a mess on the table? Here is a tiny PC worn on your eye with a fancy leather sticker. Go ahead and surf. Yessir! You betcher!