Over a year ago, on a now defunct blog, I posted about this:
Warchalking is the practice of marking a series of symbols on sidewalks and walls to indicate nearby wireless access. That way, other computer users can pop open their laptops and connect to the Internet wirelessly. It was inspired by the practice of hobos during the Great Depression to use chalk marks to indicate which homes were friendly. First things first: Is this legal? Moral? Check out our Warchalking Legality FAQ for some thoughts. warchalking.org
(The last two links have been amended to run through the Wayback Machine, the original site, www.warchalking.org, itself now no longer existing.) I was reminded of warchalking by Doc Searls' post of today:
Posts and corrections about the early history of Matt Jones' warchalking, one of the greatest ideas that ever sort-of caught on. It was kind of a snowball that rolled fast, splatted all over everything and eventually melted (mostly, though not entirely) away, leaving a few logos here and there and otherwise generally improving the world.
Here's a presentation that shows what went down in London that weekend, in pictures.
The presentation Doc Searls links to is one that brings a lot of ideas and initiatives together (and his post also has a fine snowball-rhizome-Jungian sequence of reflections on blogging). For me, it's really clarified the picture of "where we're going" — or hope to be going, moguls and governments and vested interests "permitting" — and it's dated July 2002.
