Comment I am the ice cream man (Score 1) 200
hi all,
Great to see all this "chatter" about Magicbike. So can i address some of the posts here.
People seem upset about the ice cream man analogy. "I am like the ice cream man"---IS HUMOR. In an joke there is always a bit of truth. The truth about ice cream trucks is the same for wireless bikes. You can go buy ice cream in the store, and get it faster, and with more variety. But the ice cream truck still exists and people love it. The ice cream truck emerged when refrigerator technology finally became small enough to put onto vehicles and ever since the fantastical thing of the "ice cream truck" started to excite our childhood fantasies. But now, some might argue that the ice cream truck is obsolete, totally "useless." Maybe it is technologically obsolete but we still love it, and it's still a powerful and functioning icon in our culture. So I'm like the ice cream man in that I'm able to put a wireless access point on a bicycle (which has no power or Internet uplink to start with) and take it to places that make people giddy. Yes it's a childish fantasy, and technological farce. Part of the point of the project is to show how easy it is to do this, and what a powerful effect it can have. Our imaginations, or lack there of, create technological boundaries that aren't really there. If some kid can do this on a bike, surely real geeks can do this on motorcycles, boats, planes, trains, autos, skateboards, and your mama. Where is it written that wireless infrastructures need to be static and fixed to the earth? (Well that's written in lots of places, but it should be rewritten.) Wireless infrastructures can be mounted on our vehicles, not only on towers and building, b/c the technology has reached that point. Wireless is all about the ability for motion. It's more efficient to have a physically mobile WiFi infrastructure, not only does it decentralize a network, it allows you to reach places that otherwise wouldn't be reached--that's what vehicles are for, right. If wireless internet infrastructures move, I think the Internet and our imagination of it will radically evolve. The nature of this kind of stuff is that you don't know what will happen until you put it into the world, play with it, try to break it, and see what cool things emerge. We haven't built or designed uses for the Internet outdoors and in the "real world" yet. But it's completely clear to me that we will and it will change what we think the Internet is, how we use it, and how we build and design for it. I'm outdoorsy, I like being barefoot, I like wearing shorts, I'm a hick raised in Georgia, and that's how i want to use my Internet, outdoors in the sunshine and fresh air. A bicycle hotspot is how you get it there today.
yours,
--The fu_king Ice Cream Man
Great to see all this "chatter" about Magicbike. So can i address some of the posts here.
People seem upset about the ice cream man analogy. "I am like the ice cream man"---IS HUMOR. In an joke there is always a bit of truth. The truth about ice cream trucks is the same for wireless bikes. You can go buy ice cream in the store, and get it faster, and with more variety. But the ice cream truck still exists and people love it. The ice cream truck emerged when refrigerator technology finally became small enough to put onto vehicles and ever since the fantastical thing of the "ice cream truck" started to excite our childhood fantasies. But now, some might argue that the ice cream truck is obsolete, totally "useless." Maybe it is technologically obsolete but we still love it, and it's still a powerful and functioning icon in our culture. So I'm like the ice cream man in that I'm able to put a wireless access point on a bicycle (which has no power or Internet uplink to start with) and take it to places that make people giddy. Yes it's a childish fantasy, and technological farce. Part of the point of the project is to show how easy it is to do this, and what a powerful effect it can have. Our imaginations, or lack there of, create technological boundaries that aren't really there. If some kid can do this on a bike, surely real geeks can do this on motorcycles, boats, planes, trains, autos, skateboards, and your mama. Where is it written that wireless infrastructures need to be static and fixed to the earth? (Well that's written in lots of places, but it should be rewritten.) Wireless infrastructures can be mounted on our vehicles, not only on towers and building, b/c the technology has reached that point. Wireless is all about the ability for motion. It's more efficient to have a physically mobile WiFi infrastructure, not only does it decentralize a network, it allows you to reach places that otherwise wouldn't be reached--that's what vehicles are for, right. If wireless internet infrastructures move, I think the Internet and our imagination of it will radically evolve. The nature of this kind of stuff is that you don't know what will happen until you put it into the world, play with it, try to break it, and see what cool things emerge. We haven't built or designed uses for the Internet outdoors and in the "real world" yet. But it's completely clear to me that we will and it will change what we think the Internet is, how we use it, and how we build and design for it. I'm outdoorsy, I like being barefoot, I like wearing shorts, I'm a hick raised in Georgia, and that's how i want to use my Internet, outdoors in the sunshine and fresh air. A bicycle hotspot is how you get it there today.
yours,
--The fu_king Ice Cream Man
