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The Big Hangup At Burning Man Is Cell Phones
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "L. J. Williamson writes in the LA Times that with no running water, no plumbing, and no electrical outlets Burning Man isn't the kind of place to expect full bars on your smartphone and for many of the participants that's a big part of its charm. 'If you want to partake in the true Burning Man experience, you should leave your phone at home,' says Mark Hansen. In past years, the closest cellular towers, designed to serve the nearby towns of Empire (population 206) and Gerlach (population 217), would quickly get overwhelmed each August when Black Rock City (population 50,000 or so) rose from the featureless playa. Although Burning Man attracts a sizable Silicon Valley contingent including tech giants like Jeff Bezos, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin — the feeling of being 'unplugged' has become an integral part of the Burning Man experience. But another part of the event is an intrepid, DIY ethos, and in that spirit, David Burgess, co-creator of OpenBTS, an open-source cellular network software, brought a homemade in 2008, an 'almost comical' setup that created a working cellular network that routed a few hundred calls over a 48-hour period. In each subsequent year, Burgess has improved the system's reach and expects to have about three-quarters of this year's event covered. Burning Man proved an ideal test bed for development of Burgess' system, which he has since made available for use in other areas without cellular networks. 'People who have a lot of experience in international aid say Burning Man is a very good simulation of a well-organized refugee camp,' says Burgess. 'Because there's no infrastructure, it forces us to contend with a lot of problems that our rural customers have to contend with in very remote places.'"
"The big hangup are"?
What good is it going to "Burning Man" if nobody knows you're there? People can't survive a week without facebook and twitter, that's just being unreasonable. People need validation! And likes! And the fact that it's hard to get cell service just makes you even more special to have gotten your photos out! Imagine the look on your workmates' faces when you call..."Guess where I am!" If this were an underground event, nobody would bother attending. Where's the fun in nobody knowing that you're there?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
And so as it becomes yuppified and "me too!" and too popular, there will be a sub-sub-culture for the folks that really know what is going on and why they should be there.
The same has happened with Rainbow Gatherings, and will happen with events like DefCon.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
If you have tethering you should turn it on, so others can mooch off your service. That way you can lower the cell traffic, and use your cell phone as a hand warmer.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Trust fund rebels can't get a signal on their iStuff.
I enjoy [x] and you should enjoy [x] the way I do if you really want to enjoy [x], man.
at Burning Man, you're a fucking poser and really shouldn't even be there.
Baseband code is so flawed that it's basically wide open without extensive filtering on the network side. With Royalty attending, that looks like quite an opportunity. Don't take your tech to a hacker convention...
when all you're wearing is a feather boa?
Laughter is the Spackle of the Soul.
Actually, "The big hangups are cell phones" or "The big hangup is cell phone connectivity"
Nah; it's really "The big hangups are cell +++ATH0#$*(SD^F&*^ --NO CARRIER--
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I always heard that Burning Man was off the hook....
Burning Man is a very good simulation of a well-organized refugee camp
I always wondered why Burning Man seemed uninviting to anyone with a real job. If I want to go camping, I turn off my phone and throw some gear in my car and head out of town. What exactly is good about going camping with 50,000 random [drug|STD|paranoia]-ridden strangers?
be a killer application for a 60k person party spread out over 7 square miles. They're too focused on the ways the technology can detract from what they're doing instead of finding ways to enhance it.
Someone needs to do an alternative captive phone service:
Possibilities -
a) text's go to some random phone also in the captive region, mapping is fixed over the burn so you can reply and chat
b) all voice connections get a prerecorded random message, they may leave a message that will be replayed for someone
c) captive web with art submissions
For intoxicated yuppies, maybe.
if there is a site that covers that area, it can be beefed up to support more loading. carrier would be stupid not to do that and loose out on all roaming revenue. Also a COW (cellsite on wheels) could be deployed to cover it, running on generator, assuming they can get a backhaul back to their switch. I agree, people rely on their phones too much, but it is a good thing to have for 911 capabilities and such at an event like this.
Today's burning man is about as counter-culture as a midnight madness sale at Walmart. The only difference is Walmart doesn't charge admission.
Do these guys have a license to transmit in the cellular bands?
This article is so horribly written that it makes my head hurt.
First off, the Tech Titans that go to Burning Man fly in private jets and stay in "Pay to Play" camps. Not to be a Burning Man snob, they are not getting the Burning Man experience. Also, most of them stay a day or so and then leave.
The OpenBTS network that is setup is a closed private Cell Phone network (This is covered in the FAQ). You have to have a GSM phone, type in special codes to get it to work and there are a number of restrictions to using the network. As the article stated, calling out is limited and calling in very limited. It's great for sending TXT messages, but the coverage is spotty at best.
OpenBTS only supports GSM, not CDMA (Verizon and Sprint), so that means not everyone can use it. Verizon kinda works out there, but TXT is the only thing flowing in or out (With long delays) since there are still too many people out there for the local cell phone infrastructure.
There is wireless at Burning Man, but really only at Center Camp and after about 8:00a, it gets crushed with users. Trust me, no one is checking Facebook or Instagram at Burning Man.
This whole, "OMG, CELL PHONES AT BURNING MAN IS GOING TO RUIN BURNING MAN" is completely over blown. Just about everyone turns off their phones at the gates and leaves them off all week. Burning Man was and still is a completely different world for one week.
Linux O Muerte!
And cellphone coverage spotty. The teenagers nightmare. You have to talk to the peole you are traveling with then or read a[n] [e]book.
I've been busting my hump on a cool new mobile app for BM but had the rug pulled out from under me when they failed to deliver as promised on updating the Playa Events API with location data when the event opened. :-( e.g. http://playaevents.burningman.com/api/0.2/2013/camp/5133/
I guess unless you're on the iBurn team you are radically excluded.
If Bezos, Page and Brin go, then Bono can't be too far behind.
I guess they are amused to see the serfs in their natural state.
I've never attended and I'm not in that "demographic", but some of my friends are. The word I've always heard is that it's now overrun with cops, curiosity-seeking yuppies, and even the organizers have taken the revenue-generating route.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Burning Man is a very good simulation of a well-organized refugee camp.
Every single person that I've ever met that has attended burning man has been an insipid, self absorbed, liberal yuppie that thinks living in a straw bail house would be great, though they've never actually been in one. It's to the point where if I'm at a party and someone starts talking about their last trip to burning man I leave. Terrorists, please, there some areas of the country that we'd be ok with you crashing airplanes into. Please check with us next time.
Dude, we've got more important things to do. Football starts in a few weeks and my fantasy draft is coming up.
You're not experiencing the act of unplugging. You're just going to an organized event in the desert. Even if YOU personally unplug, people can still send you "emergency" messages that the Black Rock Rangers will try to deliver to you, just like the desk attendant at a hotel/spa/resort.
Burning Man is for people who like the idea of roughing it, but are either too lazy, or too afraid to take the risk of cutting themselves off completely. If you're not going for the drug culture or "to be seen," I can't really see the attraction - you can get a much cheaper experience unplugging if you go backpacking in a national park.
Right this moment I could get more "off the grid" than your average Burner by turning off my cell phone and computer. If you tell everyone where you're going and leave them a point of contact, that takes the fun away!
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Hang Up and Get Down!
And in case you didn't know... Juggalos do not like wi-fi: (#10)
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/things-i-learned-at-the-gathering-of-the-juggalos
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
... is flamebait!
Not really the same anymore, is it?
Nothing is ever the same. Get used to it. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Well, I'm convinced, no more Burning Man for me. I'll start my own Burning Man, with blackjack and hookers. On second thought, forget Burning Man.
'People who have a lot of experience in international aid say Burning Man is a very good simulation of a well-organized refugee camp,' says Burgess.
I guess the Syrian refugees in Turkey will be gratified to know that if they just go back to their day jobs in Silicon Valley for the rest of the year...
Burning Man is now a sold out event. Has been for the last three years. Even though you have to pay $650 for a ticket to camp out. And now these $650 tickets are given out in a lottery system. There must be free alternative events? Anybody keeping a list?
How do they interconnect their local GSM network with the other operators? Anyone can inject calls into mobile operator networks?
It seems to me that in a city of 50,000 there is a need for local and 911 calling services.
What would it take to truck out some local towers with very limited links to the bigger world but
with local calling functionality? The value is people could find each other and also be notified
if needed. Local DNS and local event only hosted web services....
I have yet to see this as an interesting "diminished service" strategy but it
makes sense as a local and regional disaster planning resource plan. In
the case of earthquake, hurricane, tornado, etc. longer haul bandwidth can follow.
SMS could live as a store and forward method (if it is not now) and could prove easy to throttle
through a thin straw (and ration on a per phone basis).
It is the rare event like Burning Man where this type of technology could be tested
in the "real world" so it would be ready for "the big one". It also has an advantage
of a solar friendly environment for those that think emergency equipment should be
solar friendly.
Some of us remember calling on Mothers Day and other holidays.... and get the message
"all circuits are busy" try later, a lot later".
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
Years ago, when everybody had a feature phone that couldn't connect to WiFi, OpenBTS would have been interesting. But now, every smartphone can connect to high-speed WiFi and run a VoIP app.
OpenBTS doesn't do the connectivity back to the rest of the world... "The kind folks at the Burning Man NOC provide us our Internet connectivity." Those are the guys we should hear from. The rest is just a matter of putting a dozen $40 DD-WRT routers on poles, acting as bridges, or in a mesh routing configuration, and everyone is set. All the cellular work is a waste, unless you really want to start manufacturing cellular base stations to compete with Siemens, Huawai, etc.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Page says that we need something like Burning Man but focused on tech. I think we already have that, and it's called Chaos Communication Camp.
That joke was like when AT&T was considering using a talking goat as a mascot.... ....baaaaaaaaad
There are 2 groups of people you can make fun of on the Internet without fear of attack. The illiterate, and the Amish.
Individuals need approval And up-mods! Think about the look on your workmates' experience when they see that you published a statement in reaction to a technological article! If there weren't a statement website for technical information, nobody would hassle studying it! What's the fun of studying technical information if no one knows you're enthusiastic about it. If you don't publish feedback on slashdot to demonstrate everybody how amazing you are for being enthusiastic about technical news! Individuals can't endure per weeks time without slashdot, that's just being irrational. Cheap flights To Harare | Cheap Umrah Packages
That joke was like when AT&T was considering using a talking goat as a mascot.... ....baaaaaaaaad
But impossible to pass up when people are passionately discussing trammatical errors regarding cellphones and hangups.
I am glad I don't have signal on my phone there, although I know where to go if I must do a little drunk-texting, for example, the deep playa via art car. But I tell the world I have no signal there and I refuse to even try to look at my email if I'm sitting in a camp with wifi. But I keep my device with me. The iBurn app for iPhone and Android is amazing. During whiteout dust storms, I was able to help several people figure out where they were going. I could always look down and see where I was on the map, and because it lists all the camps and all the scheduled events, I got so much more out of my time there.