digitaldust

I can’t sleep, not too sure why, maybe it’s the slight hangover, maybe it’s cause I’m too cold or because my brain is too busy. Probably a combination of all three. I thought I would brain dump what I was thinking about, have a warm cup of tea and get rid of at least two, if not all three of my problems at once.

I’ve not talked to anyone yet about this. But I have these grandiose schemes to unwire Broadway Market with some kind of lilypad meshAP type setup. The Forum of the Future. (Forum in the proper Latin/Roman sense of the word)

I think it all began with the fact that I’ve started to really love the neighbourhood I’ve moved to. Broadway Market has a villagey feel to it, it’s off the beaten track and it has a quirky mix of downbeat old London and contemporary quirkiness. Hell it’s got one of the most famous pie and mash shops, three greasy spoons and five or six art galleries, all in the space of 200 metres. It’s also on the wavefront of the Hoxtonisation of east London, which puts it in an interesting position, half the flats on the street are for sale, the other half are in the process of renovation. A good sign of the gentrification that is going on is that there are now 2 real estate agents on the street, both opened within roughly the last 6 months.

I’ve not got rose tinted goggles on. There are bad things about the place too, but the neighbourhood is better than Brixton where I lived for about 5 years. I’m not necessarily a pundit for the gentrification of the area. It does feel like there is a Horde of art students and new media types swooping down like a wolf upon the fold; fleeing en masse from their old stamping grounds and invading greener and lower rent areas further north and east. Broadway Mkt might be a newish Hoxton/Shoreditch, and that’s both a good and a bad thing, and I’m not a new discoverer of either of these points.

Anyway, the concept, which this is more about, and shouldn’t be me being an apologist for Broadway Mkt. I would like to set up a wireless network along the whole of Broadway Market with adequate internet access so that anyone coming along can use it to go online or interact with local resources; hardware or info sites.

There’s a community feel, it’s remote enough that it doesn’t get through traffic, except for cyclists coming in from Hackney, there’s plenty of for want of a better word, Third Places, there could be spaces created in the future for actually hanging out on the street. There’s a school at one end, art galleries all along, design shops etc.

So there are a number of types of people that having a wireless network would appeal to, both local types and transient visitors. Local artists, workers, students could use the place as a hub, coming to the street for access. Of which there seem to be plenty of all three groups, and a free wireless network would attract more. Attracting more people to the street would mean more money for local businesses, more people hanging out in cafes, pubs, dropping by to buy stuff etc. For the actual set up costs, if shared among the dozens of businesses it could be quite a cheap business driving force. Plus if you start looking at it with a more business head on it would drive more people to move in who would have a proclivity to spending money at the types of place you would support with a large scale wi-fi network.

There are two sides to the free network thing. There’s the free as in no money internet access for people. Free often lowers the value of things (no joking) even if those things have an intrinsic value. However in this case it’s not all comers, only those with a portable device and wireless access. Currently that limits it to people with laptops.

In case anyone was worrying about me just trying to do some random hopping on the wi-fi bandwagon thing, this is more of an experiment for the future. I’m more interested in what it would be like and how people would use it in 5 years time rather than now. I’m keen to set something up and start getting it off the ground, but fully realise that these things take time and that it might seem a bit premature if there aren’t going to be anyone using it.

The other thing I want to keep foremost is not to put much structure in place. I want a creative anarchy, a fertile ground for other people to come and grow things in. I don’t foresee how people might use this thing, but one of the things I do want to encourage is the feeling of a Forum. A public space to come and do business, play, meet new people and hang out. I want to break down the city based social barriers that surround us when we live in an urban space, and I don’t want to do it by building things from the top down. I think if I provide a fertile loam then other people can grow things. No one can experiment with these real world online cross-overs until there is a space that is wired up like this.

First step is to ask permission. Need to go to the residents and businesses meeting. Then there’s the money thing. Actually step zero is to go to bed and get some sleep.