My project, Wifi-Hog (pictured above) is included in the show "Design and the Elastic Mind" which opens February 24th, 2008 at New York's Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).The exhibition, curated by Paola Antonelli, will focus on designers' ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and social mores, changes that will demand or reflect major adjustments in human behavior, and convert them into objects and systems that people understand and use. The exhibition will be gathering over 100 designers approaching the discipline in novel and exciting ways. Check it out if you are in NYC!
Jonah Brucker-Cohen's "Wi-Fi Hog" is a "personal system for a laptop or portable computer that enables people to gain complete control over a public access wireless network". The work deals with the topic of shared resources raised by wi-fi networks. More below:
WiFi-Hog is a personal tool to enable both private interaction in public space as well as social obstruction and deconstruction of shared resources. This approach could shift the idea of a network from a shared experience to one of individual connections between people and their link to the Internet - ie. the dissolution of LANs. The project is based on a similar idea of how property was acquired before zoning laws and how land was a public resource that had to be regulated (such as the Homestead Act of 1862 *see note below) due to people using it in ways that the public or government objected. My aim is to investigate how the same could be said about Wi-Fi networks, if they leak or pervade into public space they should be used in any way the person inhabiting that area wishes to use them.
Originally posted on coin-operated by Rhizome
