Snail Mail (Mail Literally Delivered By Snails)

June 17, 2008

Tomorrow, please be sure to check in as I have an important announcement to make and a request of you all. A rare opportunity has come my way that I'd like for you to be a part of. Stay tuned!!!

Moving on, University of Bournemouth researchers have just announced that they've developed a program for Internet users to send their messages via actual snails, giving true meaning to the phrase "snail mail." Here's how it works:

Go to www.realsnailmail.net

There you can send an electronic message per usual to a friend, relative, or work colleague, but with one extremely slow difference. Well-cared-for snails Muriel, Austin and Cecil are each outfitted with a tiny capsule that holds a radio-frequency identification chip. Whenever a snail passes by an electronic reader positioned within its campus-based tank, the e-mails will transfer over to the snail's chip. The e-mails will then be sent when the gastropods pass close to a second electronic reader. You can monitor the progress of the e-mails as the three snails ooze along their living quarters.

“Normally, when we communicate by email, the physical endeavors of our fingertips are followed by an uninterrupted digital transportation until our thoughts are emitted through the pixels of the recipient’s screen,” says Paul Smith of the Real Snail Mail project. “All we are doing here is creating a physical and biological interruption to this flow, but we hope by doing this it may also interrupt, for one small moment, our understanding of communication, allowing us to explore notions of time. It may even enable us to take time rather than lose it.”

Under "normal" circumstances, e-mails travel around 700 million miles per hour at the speed of light. Glitches notwithstanding, they arrive within seconds of being sent. The scientists suspect their snail-carried e-mails will travel at around .03 miles per hour and could take days, weeks or even months to arrive, if at all.

(Credit Bournemouth University)