'Waves', writes Armin Medosch, 'are the sort of invisible work horses of electronic mass society, but the waves as such are generally ignored.' Here, in his catalogue essay for the show Waves which he co-curated with Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits, (Riga, August, 2006), he explains how the concept of the show developed out of a desire to build a new media art discourse from the bottom up, starting with its two 'fundamental layers': code and (electromagnetic) waves.

Launched in July 2006, Norfolk Open Link is the largest community wireless broadband network in the UK and is apparently the only network in the UK that offers free mobile internet access for public sector employees, the business community and the general public.  The network covers much of Norwich city centre and other 'key' locations including the University of East Anglia and Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital.  It is managed by Norfolk County Council and is fully funded by the East of England Development Agency (EEDA).  The following links describe the project in m

Bruce Sterling, techno-prophet of the Wired school, was recently in London prophesying the future of RFID technology. Seeing beyond its crucial role in managing the logistics of commodity flows within just-in-time production, Sterling imagines RFID’s ability to provide a design fix for our ailing planet. Anthony Alexander reports on his latest version of a ‘don’t look back’ populist and market oriented environmentalism

Since their introduction, RFID tags have been the subject of intense debate between privacy, consumer rights, and civil liberties groups and the companies that produce or employ them. Through their near invisibility and the fact that, unlike bar-codes and magnetic strips on credit cards, they can be read silently and imperceptibly from a short distance, RFID tags introduce the potential for violations of privacy in unprecedented ways.

The era of quantum technology is dawning. With quantum computing set to smash our existing ciphers, quantum encryption is providing a new set of uncrackable codes. But are the new codes completely secure? asks Peter Carty

Sheep T. Iconoclast on Bluetooth's stab at the Holy Grail of the communication age – wireless networking

The LocustWorld MeshAP is an ‘out of the box’ solution to the problem of setting up a community wireless network. To date it’s the only one we know of that focuses on providing community access in line with the general objectives of the Consume initiative.

Dan Brickley, Jo Walsh, Earle Martin and Simon Kent explore a nearby parallel universe where information exchange makes sense (see pdf version here)

A Day in the Life