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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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 Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 6:38 am Post subject: Homeless Human Hotspots |
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Wi-Fi Hotspots Made of Homeless People
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So: publicity stunt, right? And, yes, in part. "Certainly, our goal was to have people talking about this," Radia told me. But it was a well-intentioned publicity stunt, he says. If, for a week in March, a hefty percentage of the U.S. media operation is roaming the streets of Austin, cursing the irony that is a digital media conference with awful web connectivity ... why not take advantage of that fact to publicize a problem that is much, much bigger than choppy wi-fi? Web connectivity is, at SXSW, the area "where supply and demand are most discrepant," Radia notes; it seemed a logical place to make a point.
The question is how best to make that point. On the one hand, it's hard to argue against publicizing homelessness as an ongoing problem, and harder still to argue against publicizing that problem given the backdrop of the privilegefest that is South by Southwest. It's also hard to argue against an initiative that ends with homeless people -- 14 men and one woman who are part of the Case Management program at Austin's Front Steps shelter -- earning money in exchange for providing a service that, at the wi-fi-strapped conference, has a market value.
Not only does the whole thing reek of digital privilege and entitlement and seem to symbolize, in two neat little words, everything that is wrong with South by Southwest/the economy/the world, it also suggests the normalization of a new power dynamic: digital colonialism. There's the project's name, first of all, with its cheerful union of poverty and privilege. There's the fact that Homeless Hotspots' Human Hotspots are, on the project's site, plotted on an interactive map for the benefit of Austin's wi-fi-seekers, their avatars floating merrily upon streets and avenues like so many bars and barber shops. There's the fact that the Human Hotspots designate themselves as such by wearing t-shirts proclaiming their Human Hotspot status. (And "the shirt doesn't say, 'I have a 4G hotspot,'" ReadWriteWeb's Jon Mitchell points out. "It says, 'I am a 4G hotspot.'") The practicality of the initiative collides, violently, with the morality of it. As a New York Times reporter who encountered a Human Hotspot put it: "It is a neat idea on a practical level, but also a little dystopian. When the infrastructure fails us ... we turn human beings into infrastructure?" |
Unless the homeless are being coerced into doing this, I don't see a problem. $2 for 15 minutes is what each of them would make doing a minimum wage job, except a hotspot can host multiple people at a time. |
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Spartacist
Joined: 18 Feb 2012
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 6:46 am Post subject: |
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| I suspect people are offended by having their attention drawn to the number of homeless on the streets. |
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Leon
Joined: 31 May 2010
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| Posted: Tue Mar 13, 2012 12:53 pm Post subject: |
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| Spartacist wrote: |
| I suspect people are offended by having their attention drawn to the number of homeless on the streets. |
Exactly, it's not the homeless who are uncomfortable with this, it's the yuppies with the smartphones. Even the campaign to help the homeless has become about them. |
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