Tales from the Burning Man Playa Phone

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brad Templeton <btm () templetons com>
Date: September 22, 2004 5:06:55 PM EDT
To: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Tales from the Burning Man Playa Phone


On the lighter side of VoIP, Dave, IP readers may be interested in
the story of a recent hack I was involved in, building a phone booth
using VoIP, WiFi, batteries, and a satellite IP uplink, then putting
it in the remote Nevada desert at Burning Man.  We let people call
free anywhere in the world (VoIP is cheap)

The story, along with photos, tech and maps of where people called is
at:
    http://www.templetons.com/pq/


It was a surprising story of the reaction of people to incongruous
technology that simply shouldn't be there, and include some lessons
about the way people view the phone and how it's changing.   Most
thought it was fake until they tried it.  Some cried with joy, like
they were encountering the telephone itself for the first time.

Here's the text of the index page.
--------------------------------------



                    Free phone booth at Burning Man


Burning Man deliberately takes
place in a harsh, remote location.  Each year, 30,000+ people gather
and build a city of art on the flat playa of the Black Rock Desert in
northern Nevada, then dismantle it a week later -- to the point that
after cleanup, you can't even tell it was there.  It's an environment
devoted to being appreciated, commerce-free -- about art and technology
and shared experience.

The Black Rock Desert is where the rocket cars broke the sound barrier.
It's a perfectly flat dry lakebed, the location miles from the nearest
village of Gerlach, and about 90 miles from Reno, the nearest
significant city.

In other words, it's about the last place you would expect to find a
phone booth, which is why I had to build one.  Ideally I wanted a
traditional "superman" style booth, and those can be found, but cost a
fortune to ship, so we went with a more modern pedestal style phone.
The goal was to have the phone just sitting there, mounted on the
desert floor, connected to nothing, yet working, just where it
shouldn't.

We did it, and the results were amazing and surprisingly emotional.
People refused to believe it, then cried out with joy when it became
real.  In spite of problems, about 1600 calls were made all over the
world.

A phone booth is highly familiar technology -- though especially with
the younger crowd, you will find many people who have almost never used
them since they grew up with cell phones.  Placing it in a setting
where it shouldn't be made people look at it like it was new.  The
exclamations of surprise and joy that people made hearing the voices of
distant love ones they had been out of touch with for only a week were
perhaps a tiny taste of how people reacted to the phone when it was
novel.

The form factor made a big difference, too.  I had a cell-phone like
802.11 phone which did not raise nearly so many eyebrows.  The form
factor generated certain impressions and expectations.

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