CCS - PART 2 : ICT/ TECHNICAL ISSUES

CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTUAL STUDIES
BY VIVIEN VAN DER SANDT
STUDENT NO: 06003781
Email address: viviensandt@yahoo.co.uk

SECTION 2: TECHNOLOGY/ICT

IN THIS SECTION:

1. VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCAL (VoIP)
2. FREE, OPEN WIRELESS NETWORKS
3. PEER-TO-PEER
4. LOCATIVE MEDIA

1. VOICE OVER INTERNET PROTOCAL (VoIP)

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is the routing of voice conversations over the Internet or through any other IP-based network (other terms for this include IP Telephony, Internet telephony, Broadband telephony, Broadband Phone, and Voice-over Broadband). VoIP allows users to call other VoIP users over the internet at no cost (or call at a reduced cost, people with a land line phone).

Companies providing VoIP service are the Providers, and protocols carrying voice signals over the IP network are VoIP Protocols.

BT Broadband Voice, Dock.net www.dock.net, Google Talk, Internet Phone Company, Intervivo, Skype 1.4, Voip Net www.voip.net, Voipcheap VOIP Service, VoIPtalk www.voiptalk.org and Vonage are some of these Providers. These are all listed – and reviewed on the Review Centre website. [http://www.reviewcentre.com/products3907.html]
Another site, VoIP Providers List is a directory of providers all over the world (it also records how many there are in each country – for instance, one provider in Niger and Oman, amongst others, 625 in the USA - the UK has 146). [http://www.voipproviderslist.com/]

VoIP “may be viewed as commercial realisations of the experimental Network Voice Protocol (1973) invented for the US Defense Dept’s Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (or Arpanet) providers” (Wikipedia).

Some cost savings are due to the utilisation of a single network to carry voice and data. VoIP-to-VoIP phone calls are sometimes free, while VoIP to PSTN* may have a cost that’s borne by the VoIP user. Access numbers are usually charged as a local call to the caller and free to the VoIP user while DID usually has a monthly fee. There are also DIDs that are free to the VoIP user but chargeable to the caller. There are two types of PSTN to VoIP services: DID (Direct Inward Dialing) and access numbers. DID will connect the caller directly to the VoIP user while access numbers require the caller to input the extension number of the VoIP user. [From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSTN]. (PSTN=The public switched telephone network – the world’s public circuit-switched telephone networks).

Millions of people globally have signed up to the service. Users can also rent land line telephone numbers to use with VoIP so they can still be contactable by non-VoIP callers using a regular phone.

VoIP is challenging the telecommunications monopolies of the past and making communication technologies freely available to everyone (provided, of course, they have basic equipment such as a PC and handsets/headphones – some laptops have built-in microphones to enable talk without these attachments).

VoIP is a global communication service, which requires an interconnected planet, and is a concrete manifestation of both technological advances and the linked-up, global village which we now inhabit.

2. FREE, OPEN WIRELESS NETWORKS

“Wi-Fi is a brand originally licensed by the Wi-Fi Alliance to describe the underlying technology of wireless local area networks (WLAN) based on the IEEE 802.11 specifications. It was developed to be used for mobile computing devices, such as laptops, in LANs, but is now increasingly used for more services, including Internet and VoIP phone access, gaming, and basic connectivity of consumer electronics such as televisions and DVD players, or digital cameras”.

[Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi]

Initially, there was a problem with compatibility between devices. The Wi-Fi Alliance began as a community to solve this issue and created the branding Wi-Fi Certified to show what products are interoperable.

Anyone with a Wi-Fi-enabled device can connect to the Internet when they are within range of an access point. The area covered by access points is called a hotspot and can range from a single room to many square miles. Arguably, as usage increases, whole cities or suburbs may in the future be hotspots.

Albert Einstein, when asked to describe radio, replied:
“You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat." [http://nocat.net/]

My understanding is that Wi-Fi is an interesting marriage between old radio/broadcast technology and digital technology, since it uses the same spectrum as broadcast systems to deliver information to digital devices. Wi-Fi is a system connecting digital devices via wireless technology. (Wi-Fi uses the spectrum near 2.4 GHz, which is standardized and unlicensed by international agreement, although this varies slightly in different parts of the world). “You send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cable.

Wi-Fi is a great egalitarian, open communication tool. Since a wave by its very nature is not easily cut off at a determined boundary point, the use of Wi-Fi by users other than the subscriber is a given. One drawback: ‘Since Wi-Fi transmits in the air, it has the same properties as a non-switched wired Ethernet network, and therefore collisions can occur’. (Wikipedia).

Wi-Fi is a cheap telecommunications tools as it does away for the need to lay cabling. Wi-Fi has opened up telecommunications, cheaply and easily, to a greater number of people. Groups and individuals have lobbied to keep it this way. The monopolies in the telecommunicating industry – made possible by being able to control access to their product/service - have been seriously challenged by this technology.

“Wireless – in tandem with other technological advances – has changed the way we do business. ‘Employees are no longer reporting to an office every day and logging onto a desktop computer. Companies are now spending their IT dollars on mobile equipment to meet the needs of this highly productive mobile workforce. More employers today are providing workers with cell phones and laptops, and wireless LANs are becoming increasingly common in businesses. ” [http://www.bitpipe.com/detail/RES/1107459255_613.html?psrc=RWI]

Some gaming consoles (for instance, the Nintendo-DS, the PlayStation Portable/ Playstation 3 and the Wii) , the Xox-360 and handhelds make use of Wi-Fi technology to enhance the gaming experience. The Microsoft Zune uses Wi-Fi for trading of music between users in a close radius.

Bluetooth:
Bluetooth is an example of one Wi-Fi system – it allows digital devices to communicate with each other when they are in range. This system is often the preferred choice for clearly demarcated areas with a given community, such as university campuses.
“Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks (PANs). It connects devices (such as mobile phones, laptops, PCs, printers, digital cameras and video game consoles) via a secure, globally unlicensed short-range radio frequency.
“Bluetooth is a radio standard and communications protocol primarily designed for low power consumption, with a short range (power class dependent: 10 metres, 100 metres) based around low-cost transceiver microchips in each device.’
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth]

The broader campaign to fight for open access to Wi-Fi networks has given us ‘warchalking’ – the drawing of symbols in public spaces to advertise accessible Wi-Fi wireless networks (these was inspired by hobo symbols). Unfortunately, the underlying philosophy was compromised, as the symbols were almost immediately taken over by commercial enterprises which used the symbols as advertising logos.

3. PEER-TO-PEER (P2P)

Wi-Fi also allows connectivity in peer-to-peer (wireless ad-hoc network) mode, which enables devices to connect directly with each other. This connectivity mode is useful in consumer electronics and gaming applications.
Wikipedia offers the following classification of peer-to-peer networks. (It is a classification according to degree of centralisation):
Pure peer-to-peer:
- Peers act as equals, merging the roles of clients and server
- There is no central server managing the network
- There is no central router
Hybrid peer-to-peer:
- Has a central server that keeps information on peers and responds to requests for that information.
- Peers are responsible for hosting available resources (as the central server does not have them), for letting the central server know what resources they want to share, and for making its shareable resources available to peers that request it.
- Route terminals are used addresses, which are referenced by a set of indices to obtain an absolute address.
Some examples of ‘pure’ peer-to-peer application layer networks designed for file sharing are Gnutella and Freenet.
Some scholars may apply different methodologies, to divide P2P network into:
Centralized P2P network such as Napster
Decentralized P2P network such as KaZaA
Structured P2P network such as CAN
Unstructured P2P network such as Gnutella
Or it might be divided into:
1st Generation P2P
2nd Generation P2P

4. LOCATIVE MEDIA

Locative media (a term first coined by Karlis Kalnins) is in essence a form of communication bound to a location. It is digital media applied to real places and able to trigger real social interactions.

“Locative media concentrates on social interaction with a place and with technology. Hence, many locative media projects have a social, critical or personal (memory) background…The technology used in locative media projects is for example. Global Positioning System (GPS), laptop computers, the mobile phone, Geographic Information System (GIS), Google Maps. ” (Wikipedia) [Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locative_Media]

GPS allows a person to detect his/her specific location, mobile devices allow interactive media to be linked to this place. The GIS feeds the data about the location.

Locative media can be applied to a wide range of uses - in tourism, advertising, community projects and art projects. Commercially too, locative technology can be used to track consumer goods through their life cycle from shop to landfill (that is, for marketing data), to track passengers’ luggage, and so on.

Locative Media is a broad term which has broad applications. A few examples where Locative Media technologies have been applied are:

Geographical:
Google Maps
The urge to find your home on a map is, of course, irresistible. Mine is:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=UK+NP26+3BG&sll=55.012934,-3.446869&sspn=14.070173,51.855469&ie=UTF8&z=16&om=1&iwloc=addr
Similarly,
Google Earth
Combines Google Search with satellite imagery, maps, terrain and 3D buildings to deliver geographic information. (Although a friend claims images are up to a year old – he claims the image Google Earth presented of his house was clearly old, as he had sold the cars which were still shown in the driveway!)

Community art projects:
Field Works
http://www.field-works.net/
Launched by artist Masaki Fujihata in 1992, Field-Works is ‘a series of projects which reconstruct collective memories into cyberspace as a kind of video archive by using position data captured by GPS and moving image captured by video’.
Project Mersea Circle (2003-2005) was done with people in Mersea Island (near Colchester, Essex). Visitors are invited to walk on the edge of the island with a video camera and GPS to record data that will be reconstructed in the cyber-archive. The results were put together for a public exhibition. The piece is now permanently installed in the Martello Tower media centre in Jaywick, Essex.

The first locative media narrative:
34 North 188 West
http://www.34n118w.net/
“A generative narrative that relies on outdoor wireless internet connection to tell a story specific to user location. Weather conditions, the physical environment, nearby locales, historic events specific to the current location and time are retrieved from online sources and fed into a scripted story structure. ”

Commercial/RFID
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags – which, as the name suggests, harness radio wave technology - can be incorporated into a product, animal, or person. They store data which can be remotely retrieved. Chip-based RFID tags contain silicon chips and antennae.
It is already used in passports animal identification and product tracking.
Future Store in Japan and Germany (Metro stores) already use the technology to manage, track and market products. In Japan, government and business in late 2004 launched a group called Miraigata Tenpo Saabisuwo Kangaeru Kenkyukai (Research Group to Think about Future Retail Services). Future Store, that is, futuristic retailing and shopping environments, aim to exploit new technologies such as RFID, sensors, ambient displays, and mobile devices.