Smart Mobs - Chapter 6

Smart Mobs – Chapter 6

In chapter 6, Rheingold discussed wireless networks and the politics that goes along with it. The best way to find public wireless Internet access in a new city these days is to go where expensive coffee is served. Rheingold also talked about how recent technical and regulatory events have made it possible for citizens to share wireless Internet access today at speeds higher than expected. New technologies and social contracts make it possible for a small amount of people to do what used to require huge corporate monopolies. Wireless technologies are a cost-effective way to bring high-speed Internet services to the connection between people’s PCs or mobile devices and the fast fiber optic networks that pump data around the world at what are known as “broadband speeds.” Wireless is the best way to bring the majority of the world’s population online. The first phase of the Internet that was owned by someone who charged for access to and it is not required for wireless. Everyone owns the airwaves. “Whether or not wireless Internet access becomes a profitable business, the success of WiFi as a tool within industries was assured when Federal Express Corporation stared equipping its delivery fleet with WiFi networks that transmit encrypted broadband data when a truck nears a terminal and senses a hotspot. UPS is also deploying 802.11b wireless LANs in all its distribution centers worldwide.” There is although the health concern with wireless Internet access that is the radio frequency radiation. The radios operate on the same frequencies as microwave ovens, and a powerful access point emits as much radiation as a microwave oven. WiFi security, radiation, and interference problems might be solvable, or WiFi might be a dead end or transitional technology. Although, when it comes to wireless communications, politics is as important as technology. Who will have control over the use of the cloud of personal information smart mob technologies transmit, as mobile and pervasive communications evolve and merge? In each of the converging technologies that constitute smart mobs, issues of control remain to be resolved.