Via our very own Ben Hammersley comes notice of Packet Garden, a program which will map your online behaviour into a virtual planet which you can then roam around.
To do this, Packet Garden takes note of all the servers you visit, their geographical location and the kinds of data you access. Uploads make hills and downloads valleys, their location determined by numbers taken from internet address itself. The size of each hill or valley is based on how much data is sent or received. Plants are also grown for each protocol detected by the software; if you visit a website, an 'HTTP plant' is grown. If you share some files via eMule, a 'Peer to Peer plant' is grown, and so on.
Made at the request of Bristol arts centre Arnolfini, PG is keen to point out that none of the information is shared - it's just your own private world. And although it's essentially just data visualisation, there's something magical about the creations. I'll be downloading it when I get the chance and having a play.
