Thursday, Jul 24, 2008
How the Talmud, hacker whimsy and a love of Linux inspired a group of Norwegian programmers to attach packets of computer code to birds' legs.
May 10, 2001 | At first it sounds like the setup to a joke: "One day, a group of Norwegian computer programmers takes a handful of carrier pigeons and heads into the hills." But late last month that's exactly what happened and, for a few hours at least, everyone -- pigeons included -- got serious trying to prove that birds could deliver data between computers.
Why? "More or less because it was a fun thing to do and no one had done it before," says Vegard Engen, one of the group's organizing members.
The Norwegians, based in the town of Bergen, were implementing an American programmer's idea from more than a decade earlier. It jokingly proposed that Internet data that normally travels over copper wire and fiber-optic cable could instead be printed out from one computer, attached to a carrier pigeon's leg and flown to another computer.
"This is the way the Internet actually works. You output a packet and you put it in something -- something that transports it," says Peter Hansteen, another team member. Hansteen's voice is low, almost conspiratorial, and he sniffs just before he laughs, which is often, as though he is a villain in a Batman movie. But he is actually very friendly, giddy even, especially when he is talking about pigeons. "To the computer that sends that packet it actually makes no difference what the actual transport is. It could be a pigeon."
What's interesting about the whole episode -- from the apparent pointlessness to the collaborative effort to the whimsy -- is that it provides a glimpse not only into what quirky Norwegians do for fun but also into the equally quirky way the Internet was created and continues to develop. But first, back to the pigeons.
As with most encounters between pigeons and people, this one started because the people had been drinking. After a meeting in February of the Bergen Linux Users Group, a number of members, including Engen and Hansteen, went off to a bar. They got to talking about things. Things like whether they should invite an eminent Linux figure to visit later that spring, whether, one of these days, they should maybe get around to implementing that crazy pigeon proposal and whether to order more beer. Yes, yes and yes.
Two months later, on April 28, the group -- including the distinguished guest -- assembled, ready to begin the experiment. A few of them went to the house where the pigeons would be released; the others went to another house a few miles away.
Technically what they were going to attempt was something known as a ping, which is a method used by one computer to check for the presence of another computer on a network. (The word, which is an acronym for Packet Internet Groper, was chosen because, among submariners, it refers to a returned sonar pulse.) One computer pings another by sending a small message that says, in effect, Hello, do you hear me? If yes, please send this message back.
Engen was appointed the role of pinger. Hunched over a laptop that had been set up on a table outside the house with the pigeons, he began typing commands. Next to the laptop, eyeing him, was perched a 2-inch-tall toy penguin, the mascot of the Linux movement. The message he composed was printed and cut, using scissors, into "packets" -- small portions of computer code, nine of which would eventually be sent using separate pigeons.
The first packet was rolled up and attached with a rubber band to the bird's white-feathered leg. There was a short delay when the pigeon stopped on the railing of the deck from which it had been released. It stared at the Norwegians, then flew off.
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