Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Using a Bicycle to Uplink on a Downtown Platform

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 12:39:59 -0500

December 15, 2003
Using a Bicycle to Uplink on a Downtown Platform
By DAVID F. GALLAGHER

s a saxophone's melancholy music bounced off the tile walls of the subway
station at Union Square in Manhattan last Thursday afternoon, Yury Gitman was
hunched over a laptop computer, trying a different kind of performance.

A thin stream of wireless Internet bandwidth was trickling down the stairs to
the downtown platform of the N,R,Q and W lines, two levels below the street, and
Mr. Gitman was trying to get the tenuous link to send what he said would be the
first e-mail message from this deep in the New York City subway system.

Mr. Gitman, an artist who is teaching a class at the Parsons School of Design in
collaboration with Eyebeam, a media arts organization, intended the stunt to be
a demonstration of his Magicbikes - ordinary bicycles rigged with networking
gear that transforms them into wireless Internet access points, using the
wireless fidelity, or Wi-Fi, technology now built into many laptops.

The bikes can connect to and amplify the signals of Wi-Fi transmitters in the
vicinity. Or they can tap into a cellular data network, as was the case with a
Magicbike parked at the top of the subway stairs. That bike formed an impromptu
network with the Magicbike on the platform with Mr. Gitman.

After some snags, Mr. Gitman and his students cheered as their holiday greetings
to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg went through. Just in time, too: Magicbikes lose
their magic when the batteries die, as was starting to happen. (A spokeswoman
for Parsons said on Friday night that the mayor had not yet responded.)

Free wireless Internet access has proven popular in Bryant Park and other public
spaces in Manhattan. A few subway patrons demonstrated curiosity, but none
hauled out a laptop to use the Magicbikes.

Mr. Gitman insists that New Yorkers need free Internet access in the subway and
everywhere else. "It's a quality of life issue," he said, and the technology is
cheap and easy to set up. Although ads from companies like Intel suggest that
the world is blanketed in Wi-Fi signals, Mr. Gitman said, coverage is in fact
still limited.

He said he used bicycles because they "blend into the urban fabric," and because
cyclists tended to be socially conscious and politically active.

The bikes are not good at allowing the use of their wireless abilities when they
are in motion, but Mr. Gitman plans to put his class to work next semester
solving that problem.

"When this project is successful," he said. "people will say, 'A bicycle with
Internet access - so what?' "

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/15/technology/15wifi.html?ex=1072495543&ei=1&en=10e286fceaa93348

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