When Code Meets Place: Collaboration and Innovation at WiFi Hotspots

by Laura Forlano

Columbia University, Yale University Law School

Date

Monday, March 9, 2009

Time

2:00 p.m. (note special time) — 3:00 p.m.

Place

Informatics East (I2), Room 130

Abstract:  This paper examines the forms of organizing that occur when code—digital information, networks and interfaces—meets place.  Over the past decade since the mainstream adoption of the Internet, there has been a growing body of scholarship about the role of media, communication and information technology in enabling the work of virtual organizations.  However, the role of place has been significantly under-theorized.  During the same period, our homes, offices and cities have become populated with a wide variety of mobile and wireless technologies—mobile phones, wireless fidelity (WiFi), radio frequency identification tags (RFID) and wireless sensors—that make up an invisible digital information layer in physical space.  In order to describe emerging socio-technical arrangements, this dissertation analyzes the people and organizations for whom WiFi networks and the spaces that they inhibit, play an important role.  These include, for example, freelancers coworking from a Starbucks Coffee in New York, hacktivists innovating open source wireless protocols in a basement in Berlin and social entrepreneurs building bottom-up mesh networks in San Francisco.  Drawing on theories from communications and science and technology studies, the paper applies network ethnography to analyze themes of social construction, sociality and locality.  This paper argues that mobile and wireless technologies enable an ad-hoc, community or peer-to-peer form of organizing that is deeply embedded in physical location in contrast to current notions of virtual organizations.  The concept of codescapes — the integration of digital networks with physical space—is developed to capture the emerging modes of communication, collaboration and innovation that are occurring at the intersection of technology and place.  This conceptual reframing of forms of organizing is essential in order to understand the ways in which organizations, architecture, policies and technologies themselves are being reshaped.

Biography:  Laura Forlano is Kauffman Fellow in Law at the Information Society Project at Yale Law School.  She received her Ph.D. in Communications from Columbia University in 2008.  Her dissertation, “When Code Meets Place:  Collaboration and Innovation at WiFi Hotspots,” explores the intersection between organizations, technology (in particular, mobile and wireless technology) and the role of place in communication, collaboration and innovation.  Forlano is an Adjunct Faculty member in the Design and Management department at Parsons and the Graduate Programs in International Affairs and Media Studies at The New School where she teaches courses on Innovation, New Media and Global Affairs, Technology and the City, Technology Policy, Sustainable Design and Business Ethics.  She serves as a board member of NYCwireless and the New York City Computer Human Interaction Association.  Forlano received a Master's in International Affairs from Columbia University, a Diploma in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University and a Bachelor's in Asian Studies from Skidmore College.

Colloquium Provided By:

the School of Informatics