the blog quebecois

hidden in the dashboard
the unseen mechanized eye
under surveillance

bauhaus

But now through the magic of the internets the travel patterns of taxicabs in San Francisco are yours for the mere price of a mouse click.

Enter the Exploratorium, an arts and sciences museum:

The Exploratorium is involved in a multi-year project to explore alternate views of the Bay Area's infrastructure. Entitled Invisible Dynamics, the project hopes to reveal radically surprising and inspiring views of the systems interconnecting the communities of the Bay. We are already familiar with the dominant street-map view of our city. This project will reveal other ways of seeing our environment, such as the view of the sewer infrastructure; the flow of water; the commercial activity of boats, trucks and planes; or the ecological activities of the marshes and wetlands surrounding the bay.

Yellow Cab has all its taxis equipped with GPS trackers and has allowed the Exploratorium access to its dispatch feed (with certain identifying data removed for privacy reasons). One result is the Cabspotter, which shows real-time taxi traffic in San Francisco. (I assume the long sweeping curve at the bottom right is the Golden Gate Bridge and approaches -- but I'm just guessing on this, as I've never been there.)

It's all very interesting. For about five minutes.

It's just an overview of what can be done, though. The FAQ page suggests other, more specialized projects; if you have experience writing to API* and Flash** applications, the Exploratorium will give you access to its database.

* API = a common computer acronym, standing for "American Petroleum Institute."

** Flash = something about showing your peepee, I think. It is San Francisco, after all.