FC: Satellite Net-connection at Burning Man raises eyebrows

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[The 802.11 network serving bour area of the camp is, as of this morning, 
finally working again. Turns out an amplifier was flaky and needed to be 
replaced. I've put some digital photos up at mccullagh.org. See in 
particular: http://www.mccullagh.org/theme/burning-man-00.html --Declan]

********

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38521,00.html

Burning Man's for Geeks, Too!
by Declan McCullagh (declan () wired com)

3:00 a.m. Aug. 31, 2000 PDT
BLACK ROCK CITY, Nevada -- Clif Cox is perched
precariously atop a ladder in the cafe tent in this
temporary city, stretching to reach a tangle of
wireless network hardware mounted about 20 feet
above the desert floor.

Cox is trying to fix a problem in a repeater, one of five
that's used to bounce signals around the week-long
Burning Man festival and provide satellite Net-access
to anyone with a laptop and a wireless Ethernet card.

"Nature abhors a vacuum," Cox says. "There's no
Internet access here, and wouldn't it be cool if it were
here? It's a challenge -- it's like bringing the Internet
to a dry, featureless desert. It's a bodacious stunt."

It's a stunt in keeping with the anything-goes spirit of
Burning Man, an annual gathering on a dry Nevada lake
bed that's part Woodstock, part art festival, and all
hedonism.

With the possible exception of '80s pop tunes played
through fat amplifiers at 6 a.m., most of what Burning
Man participants create -- popular art themes involve
pyrotechnics, anti-corporate sloganeering, and sex --
is noncontroversial among attendees.

But conference organizers are worried about the
prospect of morphing what is, by design, an
away-from-civilization retreat for 28,000 participants
into a gathering of pasty-white geeks neurotically
checking their email.

[...]




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