Project Placesite is exploring the ad-hoc social networks enabled by Wi-Fi hotspots.
What’s this about? Project PlaceSite introduces a new way of using wireless networks — to create a local information service by, for and about people who are in the same caf‚àö¬© together.
Three U.C. Berkeley students are carrying out this research project at a café in Berkeley. We hope PlaceSite, and projects inspired by PlaceSite, will form an open platform that enhances community gathering places around the world.
How does Project PlaceSite work? Imagine opening your laptop computer in a neighborhood café and firing up a Web browser. Instead of your usual startup page, imagine this on your screen:
This site is visible only to other people within range of the caf‚àö¬©’s wi-fi hot spot.
Each item in the bottom (”who’s here”) section represents someone using a computer in the caf‚àö¬© , now. That includes you, the person highlighted in yellow.
From here you can leave this page behind and surf the Web or check e-mail as usual.
Or, you can find out more about one of the other people by clicking on their usernames. Or you can read messages posted by other people in this café to a forum visible only to people here:
Comments
@ 14:09
Montreal’s free community WiFi service, Ile Sans Fil (Wireless Island) has built all the infrastructure to do exactly this and is rolling it out as we speak in all it’s hotspots…
http://ilesansfil.org/
http://ilesansfil.org/wiki/WiFiDog
http://auth.ilesansfil.org/
(granted it doesn’t look as sexy but… it works… I’m on it right now… http://auth.ilesansfil.org/portal/index.php?gw_id=19 )
@ 17:57
At what point, does one become aware that we are becoming a “digit”, whose space can be metamorphized through digital manipulation, while risking the capacity to “read” the social interaction embedded in the heart of the mind’s eye? The chemistry inhertent to the coffee shop, alone reconfigures the chemsitry that is evolving in the coffee shop/tea room. Is the stream of life becoming valued more, with enhanced social capital and financial capital through awareness of a universal design?