Slashdot Mirror
Mobile Wifi Backpack
ruzel writes "Julian Bleecker's web site TechKwonDo describes a project that is a wifi base station in a backpack. 'WiFi.Bedouin is a wearable, mobile 802.11b node disconnected from the global Internet. It forms a WiFi "island Internet" challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi and suggesting new architectures for digital networks that are based on physical proximity rather than solely connectivity.' The motivation is essentially subversive but what other uses are there for a device like this?"
So instead of war driving will there be war running?
And imagine the radiation you absorb while wearing it.
I dunno... Looking stupid, maybe?
"WiFi.Bedouin is a wearable, mobile 802.11b node disconnected from the global Internet. It forms a WiFi "island Internet" challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi and suggesting new architectures for digital networks that are based on physical proximity rather than solely connectivity."
What the hell does this mean? Sounds like a bunch of buzzwords thrown together about a project nobody wants that solves a problem that doesn't exist.
... a Beowulf cluster of these?
Thank you.
There are some military, missionary, and humanitarian groups who could use this set up work group networks in a remote location. True, you could do the same with ad-hoc networking, but this gives a one-click-connect option.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
Anytime...anywhere
"Some things have to be believed to be seen." - Ralph Hodgson
Hook up a phone, especially one of the ones with faster access (ATT's EDGE or Verizon's new network) and you instantly have shareable access anywhere.
Imagine a guy assigned as part of the press entourage of the President. His job is to maintain the wireless connectivity while the rest of the press corps connect to his node over 802.11b and VPN or what-have-you to transmit their stories/pictures back to the home office. An agreement of such a nature could significantly reduce costs for journalists.
Yes, it's cool, but this seems a little over the top:
"WiFi.Bedouin is designed to be functional as well as provocative, expanding the possible meaning and metaphors about access, proximity, wireless and WiFi. This access point is not the web without wires. Instead, it is its own web , an apparatus that forces one to reconsider and question notions of virtuality, materiality, displacement, proximity and community. " (Emphasis theirs.)
I can't imagine it will be long before this gets combined with WiMax, and then none of that "not web without wires" will apply anymore.
libertarianswag.com
"...a small backpack containing an adapted 802.11b access point, RF amplifier, custom power supply and a PowerBook G4..."
It seems kind of risky to carry all of that in a backpack. Not only if you drop it, water spill, but for some one to steal.
Now we have another "war {something}" to add to our list so teens can feel cool lugging a bunch of electronics around on their backs/in their cars/on their heads.
What idiot marketing person came up with the term "island internet". The words are mutually exclusive.
It's a mobile WAN! This is a tech website, people, not cnn.com tech news!
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
Well you might get looks from some ugly goth chicks.
Quick, someone build one and run out to their server... I think we need a mirror.
The internet used to be a bunch
of us connecting via slooow dialup modems.
The real internet is an idea. It's not
the privately controlled backbone that
the government can tap. The internet is
anyone who wants to set up a network and
connect.
YES!
Here is a mhtml mirror: http://reseller-mage.com/mirror.mhtml
google cache since its already slashdotted
Happy Trails!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
i can see very cool battlefield networks.. wait thats already been done.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
It seems to me you'd need a critical mass of people who are interested in joining a random floating network for it to be of any use at all.
.com websites and streaming music. Might be nice in a place where people are already motivated to get together, i.e. a convention.
Most people use their wireless to connect to the real internet, so what do they gain over the conventional internet. Some of the ideas listed on the website (which is getting thrashed at the moment) are redirecting conventional
Anyway, I wondered (and I have to continue wondering, since the article is /.ed): what's the point? Portable LAN party? One-man mobile tentacle-pr0n provider? Geek chic?
Seriously, without internet connectivity, what's it got? Or are we operating under the delusion that a clutch of wifi afficianados clustering around a self-contained hotspot will spontaneously generate useful, amusing, or at least non-trivial content?
I don't get it.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Motorola/General Dynamics has been doing similar things for years. OpenWings This is more for millitary use, but it's still the same concept.
(waitaminute - did an April 1 story just get out of the barn a wee bit early?)
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Would be quite cool to try and study swarm/group behaviour of things like soliders on the warfront. The team squadron leader could have this on his/her back, and we could see how they spread out.
:)
Reminds me of some of the experiments that get performed at the BORG Lab here at GTech.
Look at this guy's work on predicting user behaviour through GPS tracking and the like. Combine that with this kinda queen bee kinda behaviour, am sure we would get something really cool.
Is this some kind of new paradigm in networking?
Personally I think if you mounted these on a bunch of Vespas, you could make good use of a City grid network for a game of Pacman or some other monster around the corner game. You will only be able to interact with other people when your Wifi signals overlap.
I make my face look like this and concerned words come out.
I can see a mobile gaming. Imagine having you own little private gaming world. It follows you and people can log on when you are near. Play with people on the train, bus, in the mall.
Change the paradigm, find the game, not find access.
The possibilities for private networks amongst friends that synchronize data when they pass seems pretty high as well. Can you say organized crime?
Error 404
The page you requested was not found on the server. Perhaps you should try taking several steps in the geographic direction of the server you are requesting the document from.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
What the hell does this mean? Sounds like a bunch of buzzwords thrown together about a project nobody wants that solves a problem that doesn't exist.
I guess you could also say the same thing about the Television or the Radio... there wasn't really a problem to be solved but someone designed a "machine" that would allow for the dissemination of information to a vast number of the populace. Granted TV/Radio hardly ever disseminates true information anymore...
Point being, just because there isn't a "problem to be solved" does not mean that the new technology will not be used by millions of people one day.
...a mesh network of these? Including some base stations that would tie the entire mobil mesh into the real Internet?
While your at it, if we could just have every car that is running take part as well. Then we'd never run out of bandwidth or access points except in rural areas.
The person that is trying to get Internet gambling on US soil. You see this way, he calls him self an "Island", puts a Hawiian shirt, some shorts and Sandals with black socks pulled up to his knees and voilla..... Instant offshore-onshore Gambling!!
"It forms a WiFi "island Internet" challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi"
Such as the conventional assumption that it should be useful? What use is this?
Gilligan's Island with the coconut battery pack.
This could be the end of pasty white geeks everywhere. LAN parties in the park.
Ingredients:
1) WiFi backpack
2) laptops/palmtops
3) Power Gloves
4) VR glasses
You could set this up kind of like Packet Radio.. where you can relay your packets through other servers. Back in the days of data radio communication, you relied on the mercy of the servers you relayed through. If one went down or lost contact with its relay partner stations, you lost your connection. There are insane latency issues involved, but it was pretty exciting to communicate long distances jumping through multiple stations. Ahh, the days before the internet..
Bah. I hate exercise.
Seriously, though, I don't really see a great advantage of having a singular wifi-spot and no internet connectivity. If you had, say, a satellite uplink, you could then provide wifi to a group in an area, but it's not like I could post on slashdot if all I had was an intranet island, particularly one with minimal range.
I can see some interesting social environments that could crop up as a result of wireless in general, though I think it'd happen along the PDA or bluetooth front. Information trading, for instance - social groups could share info like MP3s without fear of reprisal from the big bad media companies. I hear text messaging is really huge in places like hong kong, where you can pick someone up in a bar using your cell phone. I imagine if you were in a wilderness or military setting, it could be pretty nice, but they already have things like GPS and secure satellite uplinks. But base station backpacking?
Here's an ideal situation. Have a LAN party in the middle of the Ozarks by linking your backpacks together in a chain. Sure, you can play Quake now until your laptop dies. This, of course, that defeats the WHOLE PURPOSE of being in the woods, which is to get away from technology.
I dont see what the big problem is or why people think this is so lame. It seems like a cool way to setup a little wifi network whenever and wherever one might like.
OK I will admit the backpack part is mostly marketing and perhaps somewhat lame, but the technology inside is still somewhat novel (if not truly 'new') and I applaud any effort to give amateurs new tools.
This grants us all an additional technological freedom. Sure it seems odd and useless to some at the moment, but uses will pop up; that is what clever people do for us. Much like rumba in the realm of robots, I don't personally see an immediate use, but I wont shoot it down for that; Someone is going to make me proud with that little pack of wifi.
Maybe Im wrong, but better to be optimistic when discussing technophiles.
...and you might just be able to find what little dignity you have left.
Playing games with power gloves and VR glasses in a park would cause a bigger panic than the War of the Worlds broadcast!
Why don't you embrace your slashbotness instead of living in a dreamworld?
By and large, this is what we call a "Powerbook." Okay, it does some stuff like translating URLs to arbitrary local pages, but that is of limited use. At least for OS X users.
To understand what I mean, go to a Macworld Expo Keynote with your Airport card. You'll see dozens of different Airport networks pop up. Because everyone has Rendezvous, you can use iChat to chat with any of them, and you can use Rendezvous to share your locally available web pages automatically. They'll even show up in Safari's bookmarks. The best part is, you could see what pages you're going to, rather than being redirected at random.
When I go to the AdHoc Conference this year (used to be MacHack), I'm going to have my powerbook set up with a Wiki so that, if I collaborate on my Hack again, it'll be an easy way to share the information. Also, during the Hack contest, anyone who wanted to could open a copy of SubEthaEdit and record their notes from the show. It allowed a quick collaboration between several to dozens of people on covering the show.
So, in general, it just doesn't seem to do much for you, aside from pranks. I suppose it's good for people who don't have Rendezvous enabled throughout their operating system.
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
I've had a Toshiba e740 for a while... what's the difference between this and hypothetically getting a bunch of wifi PDAs together and ad-hoc networking them (aside from the obvious bonus of having a huge nerdpack on your back)?
... a professor in technology and culture. shudder. You know, a subset of those liberal arts people who all spend their entire lives studying "culture" but still manage to be more out of touch with the people they are studying than anyone else on the planet.
It seems that the ultimate system would use at least two wifi cards with a search and load-balancer. One card would provide a connection while the other card searches other bands for the next connection. If both cards find an AP, the load balancer would provide twice thee bandwidth. When the first connection weakens, the system would do a hand-off to the second card. It may disrupt continuity of some internet services, that assume IP continuity, but it would let a user be ultra mobile -- skipping from wifi cell to wifi cell with little perceived break in connectivity.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Scenario #2 Creation of Mobile WiFi Network for communication during Protest & Emergency Situations. I think thats actually a *very* good use for it. Maybe even haev IP phones on this network?
Think back to around 1994/95... It wasn't unusual to have an unfirewalled computer with a static IP address sitting on the net. We used to ping-flood people we didn't like while playing Quake. Maybe even throw a WinNuke their way if they got nasty. Whatever, it was the Wild West, no laws, no morality, everything was free and fun. Looking back on that behavior, it was pretty immature and irresponsible, but we were just playing with the new technology.
Fast forward almost a decade to now, and computers sit behind hardware firewalls with dynamic IP addresses, are assigned rotating NAT internal addresses, run virus protection and spyware removal softwares, must be constantly patched to fix security holes, and people are innundated with corporate media and SPAM.
OK who could have predicted all this back then? Sure some had the ideas that it was coming, but not like this. We lost what was the Original Internet, a thing of innocence and freedom. Much of what bound it together was trust. That's gone.
So this brings up an interesting concept. Rather than having "an internet", we may have our own mini-internets. Companies do this to some extent with intRAnets. But this idea now takes it to the next level. A completely isolated network with strict content and connectivity controls to the outside world. I get the feeling that this is our future, the best way to deal with all the problems that an international connected web of distrust that is the Internat brings: Set up a local web of trust and establish relations with other webs of trust. This is the model adopted by nations in how they interact with each other (in terms of laws, immigration, trade, etc.). Neighborhoods and tribes operate like this as well. And the interesting part of it in this new domain, is that physical proximity and characteristics are even less relevant than before, opening up many more opportunities for multiple memberships and diversification.
Sorry this is a bit rambling (-1 Rambling), but just wanted to float the idea out there that this or something like it may solve a lot of our problems (as well as introducing its own, of course).
Actually, if you had enough traffic density, this could act as a supplement to wired WiFi access. Consider FidoNet - nothing but nodes that talked to other nodes when able (ie, during the middle of the night for a few minutes when long distance charges were the least). You could send non-time-critical (encrypted) mail via a local node, and hopefully, if it ever linked up to the main network, your mail would make it. You'd probably want to keep broadcasting this mail for delivery until it was accepted by a minimum number of unwired nodes, or until you got confirmation that it had been sent.
This would also be an interesting application for a freenet-like network. A mobile, distributed collection of nodes could contain a lot of information, possibly distributed backups, local caches of streaming media, etc. AND, you wouldn't necessarily have to tote around backpacks either - stick one of these in the trunk of your car, and you can have a mobile node in traffic.
Lastly, if you give these nodes the capability to smart-mesh traffic if there are enough of them nearby, you could introduce wired endpoints that would turn a collection of semi-isolated nodes into a full interconnected wired network.
How is this any different than any other ad-hoc wireless network?
How about, Mobile Cancer Machine!
I hear all the kids are getting together in "smart mobs" these days with their "cam phones." I wonder how many more of them would join in the fun if they could use their laptop's wireless card to link up to a central server via this backpack network to post self-congratulatory pictures & articles (which could later be uploaderd to the non-island Internet) (mon) instead of sneaking into a Charbuck's or waiting until they got back to the office/home/parents' basement to blog it?
Just a thought.
(I use quotation marks above not to make fun of techno-hipsters, but because I do not go about in mobs, nor does my phone take pictures, and therefore I have only heard about this.)
...we can now say "his server is out of range."
I have a powerbook which can act as an AP, and of course has rendezvous which actually makes these kinds of temporary networks *USEFUL*.
:-).
I have a sharp Zaurus with hostap, which is a base station in my pocket (and yes I'm happy to see you
I never thought of this as "shattering new paradigms" or "redefining networking" or "revolutionizing the world of computing" or whatever.
This is the same mentality that says "windows" or "plug and play" or "1-click shopping" should be a brand, instead of just being the way things are.
*shrug*
this guy talks about micro online comuities and crap... hasn't he ever seen www.craigslist.org now that is a online comunity
Intellegent mesh networks are the next step in large scale interconnectivity. Its just a matter figuring out how to sell them.
Quack, quack.
I for one welcome our wifi back pack carring overlords.
A couple of months ago, Linux Journal covered the Bass Station, a converted monster ghetto blaster that is used to stream audio and video to anyone within range of its WiFi antenna. The owners use it as a kind of a mobile Internet block party.
I found it inspiring. They used the Mini-ITX motherboards, and with the upcoming Nano-ITX boards, even smaller and more portable mobile access points can be constructed.
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
There would be other possibilities for small regional networks as well. Clever idea.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Walking around in unsafe neighbourhoods with this stuff might increase the chance that *you* get hacked
If I install a Fleshlight in my Mobile WiFi Backpack does that make me a "Nature Lover"?!!!!
So if I get this right, you get to carry around a backpack to try and replicate what all Airport-installed Macs do out of the box?
"challenging conventional assumptions about WiFi and suggesting new architectures for digital networks that are based on physical proximity rather than solely connectivity." ???
I could build that today, with stuff lying around my room. Laptop ? Check. Wireless router ? Check. Backpack ? Check. Ok sure "battery" life might be an issue. But that's about it.
What other uses? Gaming... DUH! ;)
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
Mobile WAN.
Mobile audio streaming
Warez anywhere.
Simple, anything you can do with a WAN that dosen't deal with connting to the internet. Transfering files, connecting computers together. I dont forsee any use to the public with this, but I dont really see the difference between this, and having a preconfigured wireless router in your backpack.
TruePunk | Games
I can see it now. Local college hacked by unknown persons. The perpetrator used a wireless network that was setup independantly of the internet. Once connected to this network, several of the computers on this private network were compromised. The hacker then used these computers to connect to the internet, and infected the schools network. Once the schools network was under the users control, the entire .gov domain was taken down. In other news President Bush has announced budget cuts to include the F.B.I. Electronic Investigations Unit.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Suicide by cancer?
Satisfaction garanteed, if you're not showing signs of cancer within 6 months, we'll send you a free pocket amp and antenna hat to be sure your prostate and brain are getting a healthy dose of EM radiation!
no comment
Get a linux distro tuned just for this ad-hoc network... setup a nice cache server and ipv6 and let it accept everyone... all the users woul get in vacinity would supply their own address(ipv6, again) and would setup a wireless p2p ad-hoc network... the more users using a cache system the more % of the internet it holds...
Instead of having Wifi access point perhaps in future each device will act as a repeater for a few other clients and a gnutella style network will be formed.
Everyone would be walking around with a Wifi access point then. Extend the technology to mobile phones and you could solve some coverage problems.
File sharing while running away from the RIAA.
So, how's that 20-column Vic20 treating you?
You know, I can do exactly what this guy is doing, only I don't need a backpack full of batteries and equipment. All I need is a sign that reads:
"Ad-Hoc Wireless Network here. Use SSID "TempNet" and 192.168.1.x addressing"
For bonus points maybe even one of the Ad-Hoc users could be running DHCP or something to keep people from all picking 192.168.1.69 etc.
Seriously, I'm under the impression that wireless devices can already talk to each other, and that Windows at least already has a button to check to make it work. Maybe the IP issues need to be resolved, but hauling around a hikers pack of gonad frying gear seems like the dumb way to do it.
-JoeShmoe
.
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
How is this a win over, say, just running 802.11b in Adhoc mode? Whenever I want to do large file transfers between 2 computers, it is faster to switch both to Adhoc, do the transfer, and switch them back then to simply do the transfer through the Access Point... who is it that thinks having this backpack receive and retransmit every packet is a GOOD thing for round trip time?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
If I had one of these, I'd use some sort of uplink (cell, but faster would be nice). That way you could walk around and sniff the traffic of unsuspecting victims.
You see, WinXP joins the network with the best signal. If I'm sitting next to someone, they'll bump onto my open network and may not even know it, leaving me free to sniff away.
Whaddya think? Is there potential for this sort of trick?
***
if you can run faster than your opponent.
i've got a bluetooth enabled phone in my pocket with data service turned on... http://www.blueserker.com
http://www.blueserker.com
so, when i powered my linksys off a battery pack .. and stuck it in my back pack with my laptop.... years ago, that doesn't count because.. let's see.. I didnt' annouce that it challenged mobile proximity constructs in digital age and extended personal network reach into new paradigms.
put the fucker into a wristwatch and then it'd be worthy of a slashdotting.
When I was a kid, the ice cream truck came by our house once a week. The bell could be heard ringing from a distance, and the kids ran out to stand ready to hail it to a stop.
Now, 20 years later - introducing... the WAREZ TRUCK - driving from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, wifi-serving the latest games from Razor, Fairlight and Deviance, the latest movies from groups as Centropy and Brutus, and the latest hi-quality porn from NovaVCD, Swe6rus and others (Parental advisory - reproductive organs in motions).
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
flash mob networks baby
Of course there was a a real problem that radio was invented to solve: communication with ships and sea! Television had similar, though less specific , motivations (extending the range and vesatility of human communication).
In general, technology for its own sake is pointless. Combine this with the art/philosophy-major jargon ("challenging convetional assumptions...") and we have a completely worthless endeavor.
So someone stuck an Airport base station in thier backpack, big deal! Here, I stuck a desk chair in a dufflebag: ooh, I'm challenging conventional assumptions about deskchairs and suggesting new architectures for office furniture based on blah blah blah ... I'm subversive and confrontational! (even though I have nothing of political or social merit to say)
This guy's a troll from K5. He will sometimes post good stuff, but I personally hate the mental effort involved in trying to figure out if someone's espousing something they believe in or just yanking my chain. I recommend ignoring him.
Sounds like a great idea. I mean, the U.S. already wants to take control of the net, and the U.N. wants to get in on the action. With devices like this, 'the people' get to have their own free internet(Internet3 perhaps?). Just think as wireless technology gets cheaper, smaller, grows in distance coverage, and gets greater bandwidth. Then imagine access points being on every person, every car, every building. The cost of being connected to a global community would then be to participate in that community(plus hardware costs). Gracious individuals and companies provide coverage for extra long distances, maybe over optics, to connect continents and very rural/remote areas.
Tack on some super-distributed type DNS system and VoiP and you have yourself communication the way it should be(instant, unsensored, fast, free(tanstafl)).
damn, sounds like i'm high.
1 more mile... xbox game almost done...
This is essentially a Trojan Horse. Take it down to your local Starbucks, half the customers will connect to it instead of the expected Access Point... and then feed it their username and password. Voila! You now have free access!
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Uhm, isn't that what ad hoc wireless 802.11 networks are for?
I mean, seriously...carrying an AP around in your backpack? Why bother when the 802.11 standard, and most hardware, provides both infrastructure (with AP) and ad hoc (without AP) modes?
its about time! I mean finally!
OK, so it's heavy now, but give laptops / PDAs / phones a few more years of convergence, and think about the implications of spontaneous network formation at protest rallies (if you haven't yet, go out and read Smart Mobs). Picture the next Tien-an-men square (or anti-whatever-war-W-starts-next) protest, with a self-organizing network of all (or close enough - everyone one step away from someone who's a node) participants. Toss in some network consensus-building software. Digital cameras and sound already included. Every beating, killing, tank-running-over, whatever captured and distributed across the network instantly.
Eventually the Big Man'll get jammers and then we'll have to hack together LOS lasers, but that'll be fun too.
It could be instrumental for some kind of flash LAN/WAN - Imagine a big public park there several hundreds of people gavering with their backpack WiFi servers... For what porpose ? Weekend internet ? P2P ? gaming ? online bazaar ? Actually it could be usefull for bazaar - each vendor have WiFi server with his merchandise, and buyer could browse it with their WiFi enabled cell phones/PDA, find a vendor and pay by cash...
... legislation to require persons wearing portable base stations to also wear 220lb "DMR belts", to discourage the footloose masses from broadcasting their iTunes libraries wherever they go, via their own portable subnet LANs.
I think it's called the Harrison Bergeron bill.
Move on, nothing new here, man.
Why bother with the wi-fi backpack when you can just be like Lain - The Wired? Besides, everyone will be able to connect to the wired from the radation waves of broadband over powerlines!
LainTheWired = isgod( int Lain, int denial, float truth)
One application for this could be local, anonymous filesharing. Think of a waste node, but instead of going through an ISP (bad idea if you want to stay private) you log onto a wifi lan and connect to a group of filesharers. It wouldn't be very cool in rural neighborhoods, but in urban areas you could probably find quite a few people. I'm not really sure the backpack is neccessary, but grassroots networks could be the last place for the p2p users.
-
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
Wouldn't it require that I actually leave the house? ;)
The big deal is the subversive part. Any connected computer that attempts to get to www.anything.com will get a random page off the laptop. The backpack wearer is disseminating information to anyone in the area that is "listening" (ie connected) and that information is of his/her own choosing.
Not sure how this idea is much different than SPAM, delivering content to people that they didn't want and didn't ask for, but subversive and confrontational is good on Slashdot. (when it's not SPAM)
Last year, I was trying to put together a sort of Wifi BBS a while back when I was living in a dorm on campus. This was to get past the "no server" policy at my school, and allow a place for people to post anonymous messages (about classes, teachers?), share files, and even a streaming radio station. Unfortunately, I couldn't pool any money for the project... and it never got off the ground. I love some of the ideas on this site.... it takes it much further than what I was dreaming up.
I'm a little surprised that all the well moderated comments are talking about this project like its goal is to expand internet access. It's not and Bleeker says that over and over again. It's a tool that enables the creation of new media art installations in public spaces. It lets you hijack users who expect to find a hotspot and then subject them to your own "internet", with your own services, and your own message. His message seems to focus on imposing physical locality on the network, but your message could be different.
It's subversive because it denies the expectation that the internet is the only network worth connecting to, which apparently is a notion that's too subversive for slashdot culture.
For those of you who think I'm making this up, read the "people" page. Bleeker a faculty member at the Parsons School of Design and he's shown work/writing at the Whitney and in Wired magazine. In addition to being an engineer, he's an artist... and evaluating this project as a technology product alone is kind of a waste of time.
Mike
I stuck a desk chair in a dufflebag: ooh, I'm challenging conventional assumptions about deskchairs and suggesting new architectures for office furniture based on blah blah blah ... I'm subversive and confrontational!
...and a absolute moron.
Sure radio/television solved problems... were those problems the main reason they were invented? A small part for TV and a larger part for Radio possibly but they were not the only reason they were invented.
Someone didn't say, "Gee I really think we need to be able to communicate with millions of people over vast distances using soundwaves and electricity..." They started out wondering if they could do X by creating a new technology (eg, transfer sound through the air) The ability to create technology for its own sake is only pointless if you can't find a way to use it productively.
If people did not figure out that they could use wireless telegraphy to communicate over many miles, then the invention and/or doscovery of that technology would have been pointless.
People will find a use for the above mentioned wireless backpack just like they find a use for the Nokia N-gage.
I have noticed that a lot people are thinking about permenet setups or networking computers.
How about this.
The fire cheif in a rural area with little or no cell phone access has a pack in his vehicle. Each Fire engine has a small processor which tracks GPM or water being used, amount of water in tank, and location when shuttling water from a source to the fire scene. All this can be connected to the portable network and resources tracked and planned. The next step is minuture camera on each FireFighter broadcasting vitals, pictures, and locations to the accesspoint without having to use radios.
Next scenario
Tracking the same resources on a large scale forest fire. Each attack group caries an access point.
This is just a couple of ideas off the top of my head.
1 soldier wears the back pack and the others route their visual, audio and position info thru him to the others on the team.(with any one soldier being able to take over that position)
I could think of a few other uses as well, police (riot control, SWAT) gaming...(imagine setting up anywhere and people can join in no cables.."flash mob gaming")*phew*
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Post hurricane, or in remote relief situations, this sort of thing could be invaluable.
meh
For those who haven't figured out the name by now, a bedouins are nomads who live in Israel.
/. community by and large knows what a Bedouin is and if they didn't they would know where to look the word up.
What does this have to do with my comment you moron? Nothing, absolutely positively nothing.
I think that the
I just can't wait for the **AA to send out death squads to track me down, confiscate my equipment and then break my back so that I won't ever help pirates again.
Maybe they should reconsider the whole backpack idea...
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Take the Flashcrowd (aka flashmob) idea and throw opertunistic LAN Parties at weird/interesting locations...I could see the IM message now:
"LAN Party at the top of the Empire State Building, Noon, Friday!"
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
This could help people on the train or in a crowded cafeteria or what not easily share music without the fear of the RIAA. This would avoid the problem of traceable IP addresses, etc.
In fact, this could really enable certain bars or coffee shops to become pirate dens where people show up and exchange illicit data without such a bandwidth bottleneck as the ISP. It would help to create a browseable P2P app for such a use....
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
My first thought -- "pointless art-for-art's-sake" crap.
:)
I read the website for a while. My second thought -- "oh, go hijack people at Starbuck's onto your Internet. Cute, immature crap."
I download the docs and read them, and buried deep within, it starts talking about geographically-based ad-hoc networks. Finally, a point. And quite a good one, actually.
The Internet's great and all, and it's not like you can't talk to a guy that's 20 feet away from you with it -- provided you know his (absolute) IP or hostname or something.
What this guy's talking about is being able to address people/things based on a relative measure -- geographical proximity to each other and this backpack. There are community tools on it to facilitate the coalescence of "instant communities" that can exchange very ephemeral information (broadcast a message saying you have beer to everyone in your section of the office) or use local resources ("print on the nearest printer").
It's not nearly as cool and avant-garde as this guy wants to think it is. It's not even new. (Jini, anyone?) He's applied more of a people angle on it, creating "communities" instead of just ad-hoc networks, and focusing on ways to make people interact with each other on the network -- or at least with the hoodlum who set it up.
It is a cool idea, though, IMO. Sometimes you want to talk to Jane or everyone in #slashdot, wherever she is or they are. And sometimes you want to talk to whoever (or whatever -- see the printer example) is nearby and (maybe) meets some other criteria.
It won't be remotely practical until the whole darn thing sits in the iPaq frontend, however.
knowing that my backpack is immune from being slashdotted.
How do you think this would this affect the spread of computer viruses, increase or decrease? (at least the worms anyway)
Segfault
Forget the wireless node...I can think of a few things you could do with a 6A continuous power source strapped to your back.
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Post link to a wireless backpack Web server strapped to some dude's back on Slashdot:
/.ed backpack dude run around screaming and trying futilely to put himself out:
$FREE
Watch
$PRICELESS
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
This would be good for a pre-announced event, so that a lot of people show up ready to use the AP and have some idea what services it will provide. As a wireless checkpoint along a walk-a-thon route or a bike race, this could be useful. A string of checkpoints connected by Pringles antennas could be way cool. If one backpack along the route were connected to the Internet, walkers or bikers could email their rides as they approached the finish line.
Quit whining about the social injustice of Starbucks and think about some interesting applications for this thing.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Ok, so you could also throw 10 cellphones into the backpack, add some kind of IP multiplexing protocol, and have (very expensive) lowish bandwidth connectivity to the Internet + high bandwidth between the computers in wifi range. So you could,
for example, hold a meeting in a park, or
whatever.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
nevr been laid, huh? Poor bitch. Really.
1997-99: I was employed as a newspaper Circulation Assistant, which required me to drive about 100 miles every day over the distribution area of the newspaper. In my travels, I noticed that people don't drive very well. The idea occured to me that if I could video and photograph my surroundings as I drove, I would have some amazing shots, perhaps even worthy of a television show. As I had a lot of time to plan, I sketched out in my head how I might rig such a camera setup on the roof of my vehicle.
2002-2004: I began taking cross-country trips covering hundreds of miles, in an effort to explore as much of my area (Texas) as possible. Although I have a 10 Gig MindStor, a digital camera and a miniDV video camera, I could imagine ways to turn my vehicle into a data collection vessel worthy of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Among its equipment would be the 360 degree video/still cameras on the roof, a WiFi network adapter and a file server. I might hope that I could access any of my photographs and other data from a PDA connected to my vehicle network via the WiFi connection. It would also be nice if I could simply point at something outside the vehicle while I am driving, and the cameras would automatically follow, zoom and photograph. When I return to my home, my vehicle could wirelessly connect to my home server and download all the data I had collected in my travels.
I am still in the planning phase, but over the next 4 years, if my income holds out, I fully intend to put these pieces into place. And, if I could implant a camera into my forehead, I would.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
Paw-tate-oh, Paw-tot-oh.
Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
...actually go to a real world convention, yet talk via computer. What's the point? You could have done this from home.
Since the island goes nowhere.
Use it as guerilla advertising.
Make the Wi-Fi base station insecure, pump up the output with a good antenna and set the DNS to redirect all traffic to your portable web site (that's in the back pack).
Walk the backpack into an area that requires you to "pay" for WiFi and you'll have a captive audience of the cheap crowd.
The point is that we can use the coming ubiquity of WiFi connectivity in new and interesting ways. The fact that you can't see past WiFi as utility is part of the mindset bubble he hopes to break.
The TCP/IP protocol set was created in 1974 do deal with the fact that NCP couldn't handle wireless (and adopted in 1983)... so this whole wireless thing is very old news. The use of notebooks to interact with others in an anonymous, but local area, is new.
I think there are lots of cool directions to take this, but serving as yet another bit of the Internet Collective isn't one of them. Maybe they should put that on the front page of the web site you get on the captive portal, to decrease social friction.
It's a cool project, makes me want to do my own.
--Mike--
I think its an efficient way of stating exactly what he's done, and why. I don't share your judgement of the project as worthless, however. I see value in the challenging of assumptions.
I think this type of lash-up could have lots of value for many projects. The home page of the captive portal should clearly state that it isn't part of the real internet, to reduce social friction. Once that's done, it should be fair game to Parody web sites, etc.
I personally think this could be a great thing for running a personal sharing portal, with my photo collection (80k photos and rising), etc.
--Mike--
"every time you see a cop", this sounds a lot like CB radio.
Transmit messages between cars. "let me pass you, diesel dummy!" Also sounds a lot like CB.
Tell people what you're listening to. Ahh-yup. As if they'll care, but you can do that too.
Oh! And sending traffic reports by radio. That's surely a novel use for the technolo-- oh nevermind.
1945 called. They want their idea back.
It's a prototype. I suppose the same can be achieved with a cheap PCI 802.11b card and a cheap embedd-computer core. See eg. www.soekris.com for one of them.
Back in the Old Times where there wasn't a lawyer behind every corner, many radar researchers and technicians used to work with much stronger field strengths than you can ever squeeze out of this toy. Many are still alive and happy, the rest tends to die of old age or accidents. EM concerns are overblown.
Also, if combined with wearable displays (with a bit of luck coming in couple years), could allow the people in the rear of the crowd to see by the eyes of other people (using augmented reality system - immersive VR would be impractical here; shouldn't be necessary to say, but Slashdot is recently full of nitpickers).
Same setup can be useful for investigative journalists or activists; a "suicidal warrior" can penetrate a facility, with a transmitter, sending out images of whatever they want to see. Once busted by the local security, the rest of the crew vanishes with the recordings and eventually returns with legal support for the captured hero. Could be useful for organizations like Earth First or Greenpeace. (Not limited to cameras, though; portable detectors of whatever can be used as well. A hybrid and cheap method could be eg. a pack of indicator papers, soaked into a water inside a pond in a factory, and the photograph of the paper then sent out to the rest of the crew. For organizations with unlimited funding, a LANL (or LLNL?) -developed portable GC-MS combo may fit the bill.)