Learning with the Fang

A new class of personal devices with built in 802.1x ‘Commodity WiFi’ will soon change the way smart institutions think about providing infrastructure for ICTs.

For several years now I have been carrying around a collection of devices with built in wireless connectivity – laptops, phones, PDA’s and most recently the iPod touch. The one form of wireless connectivity common to all is 802.1x – which is an excellent way to provide connectivity to the internet. Having worked from home and in a small number of client offices for the past few years I have come to enjoy and indeed expect constant connectivity to the internet from each of these devices. I have developed a strong and profitable kind of ‘networked productivity’ which depends heavily on a number of ’social networking’ sites and tools.

For the past three months I have spent a lot of time at one particular institution that has implemented several wireless networks in such a way that the most potent (and potentially ubiquitous) mobile devices will never be able to gain effective access to the internet. Consequently, I find myself spending a lot of time in meetings at public places that provide WiFi access to the internet that I can use. Even then, there are some subtleties in implementation that either empower my networked productivity or frustrate it (often to the extent that getting connected breaks the flow of the meeting and/or prevents connection).

Let me illustrate by way of example:

A week ago I went to Brisbane for a conference and decided not to take a laptop. I had two devices with WiFi – my favourite, the iPod touch and my Nokia N80 phone (using a prepaid sim with no Telco internet or data access).

Thanks to the awesome facility provided by the State Library of Queensland, I was able to keep up with all e/mail, RSS feeds and colleagues who use key social network tools (Twitter and FaceBook). I was even able to publish the odd short blog post with photos thanks to the nifty Flickr to blog tools. All I needed to to was find a seat in any public place where I could see the “SLQ” wireless network and life was good. Immediate connection to the internet, no username, no password, no filters – brilliant!

Over the week I was in Brisbane, I found myself spending a lot of time around the library (and other interesting places like the museum, art gallery and river front between there and the Convention Centre). It turns out I am not the only strange geek who seeks internet connectivity in public. At night the strategically positioned benches and stools began to fill with people, including couples who appeared to be sharing a single pair of ear-buds to listen to music. Closer inspection revealed that these people were not passively consuming music but were using Skype to stay in touch with friends and relatives at home. From the number of languages being spoken I would assume ‘home’ included many places around the globe.

The end of my week in Brisbane was not nearly as productive, here’s why:

• The second event I attended was held at the nearby Convention Centre, which provided WiFi at $5 per hour that required a tortuous login for each session, none of which survived moving between rooms or lasted the full hour. This reminded me of the days when I had to find coins to use toilets in public places and hotels.
• I could not find an ‘Internode’ hotspot at the Airport, caved into purchasing the Qantas badged ‘Everywhere Internet Pty Ltd’ that certainly helped pass the time waiting for my flight but was an absolute comedy of errors on a small iPod touch screen. (In fact, I missed out on locating a colleague and significant business contact, both of whom were at another part of the airport – something I only found out when I got home and checked Twitter).
• The walk to the library from the Convention centre was just a bit too far to pop over between sessions.

While I know it is not trivial to provide truly effective Free public internet (via commodity WiFi) the State Library of Queensland have shown that it can be done. Those institutions or governments that create public spaces where people can make effective use of personal WiFi equipped devices for social interaction via the internet will be making an important contribution to society.

I look forward to the day when we think of clumsy pay as you use public internet connections with a similar nostalgia to the old term ‘spending a penny’.

Fang – Mike Seyfang

technorati tags:seyfang, mikeseyfang

p.s. I could not resist including this link because it comes from a Telstra BigPond site – oh the irony!