ABOUT 'WIRELESS UTOPIAS'

VIEW THE LIVE STREAM HERE (28th June 2004, 7-9pm)

CONTRIBUTE TO THE DISCUSSION BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER THE EVENT BY VISITING THE WIRELESS UTOPIAS WIKI HERE.


BIOGRAPHIES

Armin Medosch
Ravensbourne College

Armin is a London based writer, artist and curator. His latest book "Freie Netze - Free Networks", published in German by Heise Verlag in 2003, examines the politics, history and culture of (wireless) community networks. He has contributed articles and essays to many books, catalogues, magazines and newspapers - one of his latest pieces being 'Not Just Another Wireless Utopia' for ‘The Future Of Computer Arts’, edited by Marina Grzinic and published by MKC. From 1996 to 2002 he was co-editor of Telepolis – the award winning 'magazine of net-culture'.

Armin speaks frequently at, as well as organising and curating for, International conferences on digital culture and has recently contributed to Wizards of OS3, Berlin; Futuresonica, Manchester; Transmediale 04, Berlin; Crosstalks, Brussels; Basics, Salzburg; and RAM5, Riga.

He is currently artist in residence at NinePin, a project by Scan Network in the South West of England, investigating real and virtual ports and their role as cultural socio-economic hubs of transmission, gate keeping and control. Armin is a member of the University of Openness, a self-learning institution, and teaches as associate senior lecturer at Ravensbourne College's on the postgraduate MA courses 'Networked Media Environments' and 'Interactive Digital Media'.


John Wilson
www.arwain.net
www.johnwilsonweb.com/broadband

John has been an advocate of unlicensed wireless in the UK since his contact with U.S. pioneer Dave Hughes in 2000, whilst working as a consultant on communications policy for the Welsh Consumer Council.

He is a founder and secretary of the Welsh community wireless network, Arwain; co-founder of Access to Broadband Campaign (ABC), winner of the 2003 CNET Networks Outstanding Contribution to UK Technology Award; and Chair of the Wales Broadband Stakeholder Group's Wireless SIG group. John is currently collaborating on a European Open Spectrum project.


Adam Burns
www.free2air.org
www.networkcommons.org

Adam Burns (aka vortex) has been a network architect and information security consultant as well as a creative technologist and network activist for over 10 years - working to bridge human gaps within the digital domain and beyond.

He is the founder of free2air.org and established the longest running open public access wireless network in Europe. He is a founding member and ex-officio director of the Internet Society of Australia; authoring papers advocating equality of access, hands-off content regulation policies, and distributed sharing of network and access resources. Adam is also co-founder of networkcommons.org and has recently co-authored a paper entitled "UK Legal Aspects of Open Public Networks".

Notoriously recognised as a pioneer in creative wireless cartography, his adventures mapping wireless networks in public spaces on foot, boat, car, and bicycle have been acclaimed internationally.




Daniel Heery
www.cybermoor.org

Daniel is full time Project Manager for Cybermoor.org – a model wireless communities project aiming to bridge the digital divide in rural Cumbria by providing PCs and broadband Internet access to the community of Alston Moor.

Daniel's work revolves around managing the funding and promoting the best practice developed over the course of the project.


Gordon Adgey
Broadband4Devon

Gordon is currently working on the ‘Broadband4Devon’ project, a major EU backed programme to assist smaller businesses exploit the benefits of Broadband. He has spent the past three years building a Wireless Broadband project in Buckfastleigh, Devon.

Prior to that, he has spent over seventeen years in the telecommunications industry, including working for over eight years in Cable and Wireless when Mercury Communications was in its rapid growth phase. During the late nineties, Gordon set up and advised a number of companies in the telecommunications, Internet and new media industries.

 

  

Think Pieces – Triggers for Discussion

We really want the Cybersalon audience to contribute ideas, raise questions and respond to the issues via the online WIKI - before, during and after the event - and to bring their wireless handheld and laptop devices to the event to contribute to the ongoing discussion.

These ‘think pieces’ appear on the WIKI HERE. Please use it to add your own thoiughts and ideas to the discussion.


Armin Medosch: Wireless Utopias

Over a time span of 100 years, aspirations for the impact of wireless technologies have been high with the reality not always mirroring expectation. At the end of the 20th Century, the promise of mobile telephony seemed finally to have been made good with GSM. Now, the introduction of 3G in some countries in Europe stimulates high-flying dreams again, a sector-specific resurgence of the new economy. Others believe that the real revolution is already underway and carried by the DIY technologists who build wireless community networks. The peer-based network philosophy of meshed networks turns every node into a personal telecommunications switching station. With wireless the physical-material layer of network, communication is set free. No central server architecture is needed anymore; everybody shares bandwidth with everybody in community networks bound by the PicoPeering Agreement; we all become walking personal Telcos.

Are these latest emanations of wireless euphoria just proof that after all history repeats itself or is there more behind it? In the much more hyper-complex and interconnected world of today are there ways to avoid the mistakes of the past and use the utopian potential of wireless technologies in a more sustainable and human friendly way? Utopianism leads to totalitarianism, but without a firm belief that we can do better in the future than in the past all efforts would be useless.


John Wilson: Towards a New Communications Landscape Ecology?

“A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.”
Oscar Wilde.

The future is broadband! The future is wireless! Wireless has played a leading role in the utopian impulse for advanced communications in recent years. From Wi-Fi to laptops, PDA's, VOIP and Wi-Max, the dream emerges of ubiquitous wireless communications.

The following sorties explore the three related themes of local wireless visions and strategies; the wider communications landscape; and the utopian destination of the Digital Commons.

Exploring wireless visions and strategies
Telco Last Mile or Community First Mile? - where we've come from, and where we're heading?

  • Leap-frog, or legacy? Over the past five years or so, communities have deployed off-the-shelf, no-licence 802.11 wireless technologies to provide a means of leap-frogging remote and rural areas into Next Generation broadband networks. Likewise the city-based wireless freenets. Whither the grassroots wireless vision at this moment of mass market ADSL Broadband Britain?

  • The community first mile! Community wireless projects are fired more by a social than a technological vision. Community empowerment. Community content and applications. Co-operative models and new forms of social enterprise. Building the global Digital Commons.

  • Towards Gigabit Britain 2010? Is wireless a strategic, scalable and sustainable solution? More Wi-Fi means more fibre? Gigabit to the home, gigabit on the move? Gigabit devices and gigabit core network in search of sentient beings to connect them, propelled by Moore's Law, Metcalfe's Law, Gilder's Law and Reed's Law? Gigabit meme.

Mapping the terrain
A fractal pattern emerges at both regional and global levels- the phase space of Digital Being?

  • From the urban wireless freenets and rural community wireless networks at the micro community level, to public sector projects and commercial strategies at the macro networks level.

  • Of aspiration, innovation and iteration towards the broadband future.

  • According to the dialectics of the "digital divide"/"digital opportunity", of policy and the market.

Towards the Digital Commons?

  • Is Humanity destined to arrive at the Global Digital Commons? - is the world round, or is it flat?

  • A world in which innovation, creativity and enterprise flourishes upon the foundation principles of openness - Open Networks, Open Source and Open Spectrum?

  • Will we realize the new open paradigm of a digital IP-based world predicated upon bandwidth abundance and ubiquitous communications, for the empowerment of communities and user-producers? Or will we remain tethered to the incumbent telco/cableco/mobileco's closed paradigm of bandwidth scarcity, and the consumer's dependence upon their conduit/content?

Daniel Heery - Challenges for Community Wireless


 
Can the figures stack up?  Are community networks sustainable, is there a model that can be rolled out?

Can wireless compete in the same market as DSL?  ADSL modems are much cheaper to install than wireless on most houses.

Can community networks realize the value they have from sitting within their communities to provide services that major ISPs can’t supply?

Will it always be driven by the techies or will the technology become plug and play so my dad can set up his own network for his street?
 
Will DIY broadband make it to the mainstream?  People see Broadband as the 4th Utility, will they want a low cost / no cost solution which cannot offer quality of service?  How many water / gas / electricity companies would be around if their service was not 99% reliable?

If broadband is a utility, it will be treated like a commodity.  Can community networks broker deals for the supply of services with their members as a way of becoming sustainable?