by Lewis Sykes

Overview
Wireless technologies have changed the world and continue to do so at an unprecedented rate. But as we embrace these technologies, we also need to ask how are they changing our personal and social spaces? Do we really want mobile phone calls on commercial flights – or is ‘always-on’ culture making us wireless wage slaves? Who owns the wireless world and how can we truly realise its creative potential beyond the realms of corporate culture? Has wireless technology liberated communication or has it simply revealed a darker, more dysfunctional side to our natures? What can users and practitioners do to take control of the airwaves and shape and colour their own future? These are just some of the global issues, which Future Wireless addressed – not just through live debate – but also through practical demonstration, workshops and unique artist interventions.

by Dr. Richard Barbrook

“It is possible to be enthusiastic about contextualised use of new technologies while being critical of technological progress ideology that still so thoroughly surrounds even critical techno-cultures”.
Tapio Mäkelä

by Christian Benesch

Far from just a long awaited relief from endless troubles with cabling, "wireless" has become a synonym for independence. A term that not only describes the new networks that are becoming so popular, but also devices that can leave their base and be the permanent companion of the owner. They set him free of many prior restrictions. They let him move. They are there when needed to provide their calendars, task lists or the oc

by Dooeun Choi

Wireless technology lets us be connected anywhere and anytime. So we can expect that a wireless future will bring much more ‘ubiquitous’ connectedness. However, a single node can only manage a limited number of branches, so there should be intermediate nodes that vary in terms of quantity and quality. Therefore the important issue is to whom and what we would like to be connected. The utopia of a wireless future might come if we can figure out how we can relate with other valuable nodes and classify them as ‘personal’ cases.

by Peter Cochrane

Peter Cochrane participated in the Cybersalon & Open Spectrum UK conference, FUTURE WIRELESS: practical.discourse.creative,at the Science Museum's Dana Centre, London, October 4 2005. The following article presents ideas aired in Peter Cochrane's contribution to the evening panel discussion, Wireless Horizons:

The Search for Spectrum
Peter Cochrane's Blog, silicon.com, Monday October 10 2005
Written at Chatham House, London. Copy dispatched via Wi-fi from a London coffee shop.

by Celine Condorelli and Beatrice Gibson, taxi_onomy

Our vision of a wireless future is dystopic. Being constantly connected means you are forced to simultaneously be doing several things at once, and we see this as a fundamental problem. A world in which we cease to process because we are swamped by the varying and multiple trajectories of information means, in fact, that we are increasingly distracted by our own technology, and that we cannot escape our own data. We become in essence the victims of an economy of distraction.

by Sophia Drakopoulou

A new kind of social space is created out of the transmission and reception of data between mobile phone users. A private communicational space arising from the city's striated space, a social space born out of a new telecommunications technology. This virtual but real communicational space can be thought as a subversive space, a decentralised network where users generate and exchange their own data, take pictures, make phone calls and access the internet.

My research explores the creation and appropriation of this space by its users and investigates a broadcasting model where people will be able to send their text and other multi-media elements and display them onto designated local public screens.

by Robert Horvitz

“Open Spectrum” is based on the realisation that technology can reduce or even eliminate the need for governments to micro-manage wireless communication. In different contexts it can be viewed as:

by Adam Hyde

Wireless began its life as a synonym for radio. However, now the two are becoming cousins, related by a common physical phenomenon but also with distinct emergent identities.

by Giles Lane

The focus on technology deployments must go hand in hand with sensitive community development work, otherwise there is a danger that only the ‘early adopters’ and people most like those excited by the technologies will participate and this will exacerbate a ‘digital divide’.