ad-hoc networks Archives

Turning Cell Phones into Urban Supercomputers

February 21, 2011 / Klint Finley

Giant cell phone

Another one from me at ReadWriteWeb:

One of the primary ideas behind IBM’s Smarter Planet concept is a web of sensors all over the planet, leading to a data explosion. But what if that web of sensors was more directly under the public’s control? Strategic forecast consultant Chris Arkbenberg hits on an interesting idea in a recent blog post. He muses on the idea of using mobile phones for grid computing, a la SETI@home, to create massive distributed supercomputers for processing all of this data. “Consider the processing power latent across a city of 20 million mobile subscribers, such as Tokyo,” he writes.

Arkenberg takes the idea further by suggesting that sensors could be built into mobile phones that could monitor air quality or act as a sort of distributed surveillance system. The possibilities are endless. “Consider what could be done with an API for addressing clusters of mobile sensors,” he writes.

ReadWriteCloud: Turning Cell Phones into Urban Supercomputers

Plan the Government-less Internet at Contact

February 10, 2011 / Klint Finley

Contact is an unconference organized by Douglas Rushkoff on the subject of building new, government-less Internets. The event will be held in New York City on October 20 2011.

Here’s part of Rushkoff’s explanation of the event:

At the epicenter of CONTACT will be the Bazaar – a free-form marketplace of ideas, demos, haggling, and ad-hoc connections. If you have visited the Akihabara, Tokyo’s ultra-vibrant open-air electronics market, or the under-the-highway open-air jade market of Kowloon, or even the Burning Man festival, you understand the power of combining commerce, physical location, and serendipity. A decidedly unstructured counterpart to the convened meetings, solo provocations, and the MeetUpEverywheres, the Bazaar will bring p2p to life, encouraging introductions, brokering, deal-making, food-tasting, and propositions of every kind. It is where the social, business, political, and spiritual agendas merge into one big human agenda.

Contact will hope to revive the spirit of optimism and infinite possibility of the early cyber-era, folding the edges of this culture back to the middle. Social media has come to be understood as little more than a marketing opportunity. We see it as quite possibly the catalyst for the next stage of human evolution and, at the very least, a way to restore p2p value exchange and decentralized innovation to the realms of culture, commerce and government.

Content was never king. Contact is. Please join us, and find the others.

Shareable: The Evolution Will Be Socialized

Klintron Talks Ad-Hoc Networking on Web TV Show

February 3, 2011 / Klint Finley

You’ll only hear my voice, though, we didn’t do live video in. I’m talking about the subjects raised in my government-less Internet series. I start about 11:57 minutes in, and I’m followed by Johnny Diggz of Tropo and Geeks Without Bounds who talks about some of the more practical, boots on the ground type stuff people are doing to keep communications networks working during emergencies.

4 More Projects to Create a Government-less Internet

February 1, 2011 / Klint Finley

I did a follow-up to my story last week about wireless mesh network projects, adding four more projects to the original list of three.

ReadWriteWeb: 4 More Projects to Create a Government-less Internet

Also, I’ll be on This Week in Cloud Computing tomorrow around 3:45 PST talking about wireless ad-hoc networks.

3 Projects to Create a Government-less Internet

January 28, 2011 / Klint Finley

I wrote about three different projects that are working to create a government-less Internet over at ReadWriteWeb:

In Cory Doctorow’s young adult novel Little Brother, the protagonist starts an wireless ad-hoc network, called X-Net, in response to a government crack-down on civil liberties. The characters use gaming systems with mesh networking equipment built-in to share files, exchange message and make plans.

The Internet blackout in Egypt, which we’ve been covering, touches on an issue we’ve raised occasionally here: the control of governments (and corporations) over the Internet (and by extension, the cloud). One possible solution, discussed by geeks for years, is the creation of wireless ad-hoc networks like the one in Little Brother to eliminate the need for centralized hardware and network connectivity. It’s the sort of technology that’s valuable not just for insuring both freedom of speech (not to mention freedom of commerce – Egypt’s Internet blackout can’t be good for business), but could be valuable in emergencies such as natural disasters as well.

Here are a few projects working to create such networks.

ReadWriteWeb: 3 Projects to Create a Government-less Internet

I also wrote a piece on how some Egyptians are getting around the Internet crack down.

Torrent Raiders: a copyfight arcade game

December 3, 2007 / Klint Finley

torrent raiders

New project from rhizome.org

Torrent Raiders is a dynamic network visualization realized through the idioms and aesthetics of arcade-style video games. Driven in real-time by the activity of bit torrent swarms, Torrent Raiders takes place on the ad-hoc networks created by bit torrent users. Torrent Raiders playfully addresses issues of domestic surveillance and intellectual property by putting players in the role of a mercenary copyright enforcer, encouraging them to capture evidence against peers on torrents in order to collect bounties. Players assist in the distributed surveillance of these torrent swarms, sending information to a central server where it will be used to drive further visualizations of this information. As a dynamic visualization exploring privacy, piracy and surveillance, Torrent Raiders challenges Internet users, content pirates and government spooks to examine their allegiances and mistrust their computer connections.

Download from torrentraiders.com.

(Thanks Wes).

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