WiFi island

I don’t know about you, but when someone creates a piece of mobile technology that it describes as functional, provocative and designed for expanding the possible meaning and metaphors about access, proximity, wireless and WiFi, the svelte language is a siren song with its forked tongue in my ear. Where can I get such a product? What is it? What could this possibly mean?

[slaps self, feels ashamed for being seduced by hyperbolic marketing jargon]

In struts a geek wearing the WiFi.Bedouin, an “art-technology product” (read: backpack) that acts as a mobile WiFi node. Combine a PowerBook G4 running some custom software, an 802.11b access point, RF amplifier, power supply and a viewable PDA used to display GPS data and you have true mobile internet, as opposed to simply mobile users (forced to drink Starbucks coffee while they work).

Seriously, though – check out Julian Bleecker’s unique creation, developed during the fall and winter of 2003 at New York’s Eyebeam Atelier.