DATA RUN

"Joe: I am really excited about eteam’s project Saturday afternoon. They are having a person walk back and forth between two computer terminals carrying a digital file, and each time they get to a computer terminal, they upload the file, the file size doubles, and then they make their return trip. While they are walking back and forth between the two terminals, the file is being sent through the internet between the two computers. So as the day progresses, and the file gets larger and larger, there will be a tipping point at which the human walker carrying the data file will be faster than the internet. And I like this as a kind of a “is the horse faster than the train” thing you would do on a state fair, so it’s got a real festival feeling. It’s going to be fun to harass the walker and find out where they’re at and how much they’re carrying at any given moment."

Joe McKay in an interview with Paddy Johnson and Marcin Ramocki

One person responded to the poster. He is the one in the green shirt. His
name is Will. When we met Will and his mom at the coffee shop in Woodstock, VT
his two friends were with him, because they had a sleep over the night before.
After the meeting Will convinced his friends to sit at Station A (in an office at the
recreation center) and B (in the back room of the shop Noushka, a life style boutique
in the center of the town). Will would be the runner, distance 1km each way.

View Woodstock data run in a larger map

The 2TB drive weighed about 2 pounds and was the transfer tool for the data runner

The run began at 11:00 AM with the initial transmission of a 512k file
It grew exponentially equal to the binary system, starting with 2⁸ and gradually moving up in filesize
over time. Each time a file arrived at a host station, its size would grow to the next power of two
and sent back using the same carrier. This way both speeds could be compared over time.

data transfer

One moment of a live data transfer.

Justin substituting for Will as the data runner for two rounds.

Ezra substituting for Will as the data runner for another two rounds.

The chart shows the increase in filesize over time and the arrival time of each file at the destination.
At 1:10PM the data runner sped past the digital delivery with the 1GB file which was delivered at
1:27PM while the digital delivery still needed 59 more minutes.

At 1:47PM the 2GB file was delivered by the data runner. The digital delivery of the 1GB still hadn't
arrived and it showed it would need another 27min giving the data runner a winning margin of about
3hours until the 2GB file would arrive through digital transmission.

Almost 3 hours after the start of the data run, Will, Justin and Ezra were the declared winners of
the woodstock data run!