Media Mutandis - a NODE.London Reader - Future Wireless

Future Wireless: practical.discourse.creative • L.Sykes

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 17:33:41 +0000

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.

Future Wireless Introduction • Dr. R.Barbrook

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 17:41:36 +0000

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

Future Wireless Vision • C.Benesch

Sat, 18 Feb 2006 11:51:38 +0000

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

Towards a Human-centric Communication • D.Choi

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 17:31:08 +0000

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.

The Search for Spectrum • P.Cochrane

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 11:53:40 +0000

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.

Future Wireless Vision • C.Condorelli, B.Gibson

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:27:45 +0000

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.

A Wireless Future • S.Drakopoulou

Tue, 14 Feb 2006 11:50:37 +0000

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.

Future Wireless Vision • R.Horvitz

Mon, 13 Feb 2006 11:00:48 +0000

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:

Future Wireless Vision • A.Hyde

Sun, 12 Feb 2006 11:12:16 +0000

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.

Wireless Future Issues • G.Lane

Sat, 11 Feb 2006 11:13:37 +0000

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’.

Wireless Creative Fringe and Popular Mobile Cultures • T.Mäkelä

Fri, 10 Feb 2006 11:16:52 +0000

by Tapio Mäkelä

In Norway, it is believed that the fastest growing mobile market is the country’s sheep population, who in the future will carry a customized GSM device transmitting location and other contextual information. Should the creative wireless practitioners follow the pack and start planning for new projects in the rural locative context?

Future Wireless Vision • F.McKee

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 11:18:48 +0000

by Francis McKee

I see two areas of potential worry in a wireless future.

The first is the accelerated loss of privacy. Iris printing in airports is already with us and soon a formidable quantity of data will be attached to these prints. The pervasiveness of wireless technology simply allows this information to be accessed much more quickly and much more comprehensively than ever before. In the post 9/11 + 7/7 context where individual rights are being eroded in the name of protecting the greater public this poses serious threats to liberty and individual privacy. (There is also the annoyance and manipulation of accelerated advertising targeted more specifically at each person’s consumer profile in every public arena).

Future Wireless Vision • S.Noel

Wed, 08 Feb 2006 11:52:36 +0000

by Sebastien Noel

I woke up this morning swimming in a dense data smog. Your picture was immaterially floating around me. I imagine the thousands of connections, the millions of invisible cables entangling me and the reality I perceive.

Will walls remember my name? Will fridges chat up TVs while other objects syndicate themselves and organise their revolution? With time, our electronic love children grow smarter. They already have a rich vocabulary. They think and dream.

Electric brainwaves. Organic signals. Bluetooth monologues and wireless fantasy.

As their physicality slips into the electromagnetic realm, their behaviours become all the more human. Nothing new, just another step to the magical.

Locative Space: Situated and Interconnected • M.Tuters

Tue, 07 Feb 2006 11:20:29 +0000

by Marc Tuters

Locative media refers to a mobile media movement in which location and time are considered essential to the work. As locative blogger extraordinaire Thomas Angermann of Angermann2 says in response to a post on “Mapping Hacks” by Schuyler Earle and Jo Walsh, “at one level, thinking ‘locative’ means doing geo stuff without actually having learned the traditional geo toolsets [read, geographic information systems (GIS), ED]”.

Vision of a Wireless Future • S.Symons

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 11:54:56 +0000

by Steve Symons

I mean really, who wants to watch television programmes on a small handheld screen, anywhere, anytime? A group or about 400 in Oxford (UK) apparently do http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4620792.stm. It seems that 36 percent of the study preferred to use the mobile TV service at home (as opposed to 23 percent at work and 28 percent on the move). It is hard to judge much from this study, we do not know the ages or background of the group, but guessing at a young/student population then the 36 percent is probably not that surprising. For me there is a question inherent in this study, “Are we becoming a more disjointed/fractured society where personal demands and needs rule over that of the groups?” However, I do hope to be among the first to suggest that whatever the world’s woes are, the fact that a set of the population stop receiving their soap opera fix in a communal space is neither here nor there.