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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?"
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.
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?
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
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?
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).
I see this as being of great interest to dissident groups. You disseminate information from the backpack cell. Members just need a laptop, and to be in the vicinity. They don't even have to really know each other, or who the guy with the backback is. The gov't would have to quickly pick up on the ap, and zero in on the signal.. And they wearer can be walking through the street market, as are the people with the laptops busily downloaded the censored information...
Drawing from today's headlines, say the Taiwanese gov't cracks down on the KMT; they could walk through the nightmarket and exchange info. bring the AP to an internet cafe, and not even use the cafe's network, but still have an online exchange.
There's all sorts of subversive uses.