Hacking the City? Why Municipal Wireless is Boring

I just got asked to serve on an advisory group setup to help the mayor of San Francisco figure out what to do about their TechConnect municipal wireless project.

I've been lamenting the state of Wi-Fi lately. I worked hard at NYCwireless trying to get people interested in DIY broadband... the cost structure of Wi-Fi just lends itself to highly decentralized deployment. And you can optimize your network for what you want - hotspots, point-to-point backhaul across the desert, totally separate regional networks not connected to the Internet, VoIP for low-income households and non-profits, etc. But the "municipal wireless" craze sweeping the U.S. seems to be about making Wi-Fi just another boring, plain vanilla, one-size-fits-all public utility. My hunch is that it will end up being available everywhere, but useful for nobody. (Sort of like a lot of American public transportation)

So, sad at the state of Wi-Fi, I ran across a post by Michael Lenczner of the Montreal community wireless group Île Sans Fil (blogged by Sean Savage, creator of Wi-Fi social network app Placesite) and got all fired up again. I met Mike last year at the Mobile Digital Commons Network in Montreal, probably the most fun I've had at a conference, ever.

Mike is fired up about the potential for grassroots wireless. and you should be too:

We are a group of concerned and motivated citizens taking control of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) infrastructure in our city. That's empowering as an example to others that this important part of our life isn't only the domain of companies and corporations or even governments. To me, that's a more significant impact than the actual fact that we have 55 hotspots and 9000 users

We are hacking the built city.
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 enhanced space or mixed-reality. The supposedly seperate existences of off-line and on-line are intersecting and overlapping - most rapidly in cities.

Where this get's exciting is that by citizens, artists and non-profit groups developing and adapting these technologies (portable devices, wireless connectivity, mobile- and location-based applications) and their model (who is supposed to use them and for what purpose) we are able to impact and change this enhanced space and through that have an actual impact on how the built city is experienced. 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 of looser associations between individual, to increase valuing of art and artists, or to help people get laid (more) on the basis of shared interests as well as looks.

We might need to bring some of those guys to the Bay Area.

Comments

[Howard Rheingold]

Looks like San Jose has the jump on San Francisco in attracting some of those guys to the Bay Area in August, 2006.

http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/

[mtl3p]

anthony - these two messages should psych you up as well:

http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/wsfii-discuss/2005-October/000374.html

and the follow-up:
http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/wsfii-discuss/2005-October/000375.html