[wsfii-discuss] hacking the built city

Thu Nov 3 03:57:57 UTC 2005

Much of what Michael talks about has also been seen with NYCwireless,  
especially Spectropolis (www.spectropolis.info). Hacking the city was  
a big component to a number of the art projects we hosted.

And we involved all aspects of wireless technology: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth,  
Radio, Audio, Cell, and GPS.

One thing of note is that all of the above lend themselves to being  
"deeply hacked" except for the Cell networks. All you can do on the  
cell networks is what the providers allow you to do, which is send  
SMS or make voice calls. All of the other wireless technologies are  
incredibly malleable, which gave artists freedom to be creative and  
dream up concepts and works that were amazingly innovative and  
enlightening.

As for the grassroots community building, we have that too,  
especially via projects like NeighborNode, which enables entire city  
blocks in NYC to get to know one another (we have examples!), and  
reconnect and form the human relationships that used to form in  
smaller town centers.

Dana Spiegel
Executive Director
NYCwireless
dana at NYCwireless.net
www.NYCwireless.net
+1 917 402 0422

Read the Wireless Community blog: http://www.wirelesscommunity.info

On Nov 2, 2005, at 7:35 AM, Michael Lenczner wrote:

> On 11/2/05, Karel Kulhavy <clock at twibright.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 01, 2005 at 11:09:22PM -0500, Michael Lenczner wrote:
>>> this smells of ego-posting.  sorry -  but I really want to make sure
>>> that the wireless community is exposed to this idea.  If i'm  
>>> wrong - i
>>> would rather know sooner rather than later.
>>>
>>> http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/003701.html
>>>
>>> Michael Lenczner wrote to me suggesting that I check out a recent  
>>> post
>>> on his weblog about some of the larger issues raised by his work at
>>> Ile Sans Fil, a Montreal community wireless project. It's a
>>
>> "that we have 55 hotspots and 9000 users"
>>
>> Prague is said to have 2500 hotspots and 15000 users
>>
>> There is somewhere a layer for GRASS GIS published with the  
>> network link data
>> I saw it but I can't now find the link... If anyone wants to verify
>> the number, I can try to find it...
>>
>>>     This statement is based on the idea that as wireless devices and
>>> services proliferate and ubiquitous computing becomes a reality, the
>>> physical environment (especially the built city) is rapidly becoming
>>
>> ...as wireless devices and services proliferate and ubiquitous  
>> computing
>> becomes a reality, the physical environment (especially the radio
>> spectrum) becomes one chunk of white noise and the wireless network
>> starts to be unusable. At least this was the situation in Prague.
>>
>> Ile Sans Fill can see what it's future is ;-) Radio networks are not
>> scalable.
>>
>>> enhanced space or mixed-reality. The supposedly seperate  
>>> existences of
>>> off-line and on-line are intersecting and overlapping - most rapidly
>>> in cities. [...]
>>>
>>>     To be sure, we have constraints on how much we can hack the  
>>> city -
>>> it's not as if we can easily directly confront the power of the the
>>> police or building developpers. But we can work to allow spaces to
>>> better retain memories, to promote both stronger and a larger number
>>
>> example?
>>
>  - if you're talking about memories - the only example we have right
> now is allowing users to place flickr photo's on the portal page.  But
> london's place-based wiki pages are another example.  Both of these
> let people attach artefacts to public places which are discoverable to
> other users of that public space.  But there's *lots* of other
> examples of people doing that.
>
> (this is all through the ISF portal page - go here for cafe laika's:
> http://auth.ilesansfil.org/portal/index.php?gw_id=19 )
>>> of looser associations between individual, to increase valuing of  
>>> art
>>> and artists, or to help people get laid (more) on the basis of  
>>> shared
>>
>> example?
>>
>
> An example of people getting laid more through wireless networks?
> Still working on that.  ;-)
>
> Increasing associations - let's see - once we have (opt-in) profiles
> attached to our users there should be a lot more of that.  Also
> sharing playlists via iTunes over the local network would do that
> (kind of like seeing what book the person next to you is reading).
>
>>> This is a fascinating transformation to watch. When public wireless
>>> Internet spots first popped up, there was a distinct geeky edge to
>>> them, which soon broadened into the perception that they were really
>>> only for students and knowledge workers still on the clock on
>>> weekends. But while this latter concept remains the dominant one in
>>> mainstream advertising and news reports, the growing integration of
>>> wireless tools into the every day lives of creative communities  
>>> means
>>> that these networks are no longer just the province of people who
>>> "have to" be online. Projects such as Dencity, Neighborhood
>>> Satellites, and other smart environment efforts are only possible  
>>> when
>>> a wireless infrastructure is not just present, but expected.
>>>
>>> This is already true, to an extent, with mobile phone networks,
>>> although in this case the carrier-driven limitations of the services
>>> militate against taking full advantage of their potential. Projects
>>
>> I think it's rather technical limitation of the network itself. Try
>> GPRS and you'll understand ;-)
>>
>>> like a Placeopedia/Location-based Wikipedia mashup are really only
>>> possible with an open Internet connection.
>>
>> I would add "broadband and reliable" to prevent disappointment of the
>> users in the future. It's nice if it's open but it's useless when  
>> it has
>> throughput in orders of tens kbps, 15% packet loss, 3000ms  
>> roundtrip and
>> MTBF of 5 minutes (a situation common in CZFree.NET Prague)
>>
>> CL<
>>> When the mass of people come to expect the presence of open wireless
>>> networks, and are willing to participate in both the creation and  
>>> the
>>> use of information that is only relevant in the context of physical
>>> location, the transformation will be compete. The overlay of
>>> information and connection the technology enables will no longer  
>>> have
>>> to suffer geeky labels like "augmented reality." Instead, we'll just
>>> call it community
>>>
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