Radical Networks was rad

Last weekend, Brooklyn, in the chilling space of NYU Polytechnical School of Engineering, was held the Radical Networks conference, organized by Sarah Grant, Amelia Marzec and Erica Kermani. This was the first edition, but the mood and quality of it really made it seem like this had been rolling for years. The talks and workshops available over the weekend shared these goals:

To understand how the technology can be used as a method of control and how to subvert that.

Teach people how to use networking technology for themselves.

Encourage creative and social exploration with computer networks.

The event was sold out but thanks to Internet Society NY, you could watch a live stream and still can access the recordings. So I’ll just point you a couple that I really enjoyed, although you could just watch all of them, as they really bring interesting approaches and point of views on these questions.

Seeing the Internet

Do you have any idea what the cloud looks like? Well, Shuli Hallak has been photographing it for years so the “Saint Thomas of I have nothing to hide” can’t say he did not know.

In The Final Days Of The WWW

A portfolio of digital art projects done by Dennis de Bel and Roel Roscam Abbing, former students of Piet Zwart Institute. They played around and hacked the notions of networking in goofy clever ways and brought a breath of fresh air and good laughs in the middle of all the “serious” talks we had over the weekend. A must watch in terms of creativity and exploration.

NYC Mesh, a community owned Wi-Fi network

And if you want to hear me speak about why you should talk to your neighbor, or how citizens can reclaim these hidden networks Shuli Hallak talked about, hop on the NYCmesh train with Brian and Dan.

See you next year, RadNets.

(Cover illustration uses a photo by Shuli Hallak, licensed CC-BY-SA)