Communication Breakdown
Communications from the world of, er, communications. And other stuff.
Wednesday 31 December 2008, 11:59 AM
Hippies, Wi-Fi and Martin Luther King Jr.
A visit to the Glastonbury Why Wi-Fi Campaign website is most illuminating. Kicking off with an MLK quote ("Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter"), the site trots out the usual references to cities that have closed down their public Wi-Fi, claiming that this occurred because Wi-Fi is dangerous. As opposed to reasons more closely aligned with cost (the usual factor, most notably in the demise of Earthlink's Philadelphia experiment) or, say, pressure from groups like the Why Wi-Fi campaign.
Thankfully, the mood is lightened with some poetry (just opposite the "The important thing is not to stop questioning" Einstein quote), in the form of Jackie Edwards' "Lap (Top) Duncers" (abridged). My favourite three verses are these:
The Wi-Fi makes my husband sick
He can't sleep in his bed.
So, a bed-sit out of Glaston is
Now where he rests his head!
Do we really need it
In our lovely Somerset Town?
It's certainly making some folk sick
And causing me to frown.
Access to the internet,
At Hotels where they stay
Is all the Wi-Fi tourists need
To help them on their way.
Quite.
PreviousComments on this post
Hmmm.....I'm a Glastonbury resident, and if you come to the town, you will see many a hippy armed with a laptop on the streets. The thing is that most of the cafes and hotels offer free wi-fi access through their own routers and not the towns public wi-fi. The public wi-fi signal is more off than on at the moment, and when it is on it only lights up a couple of bars on my laptop (in the town centre).
It is a tough one, beccause the school's still out when it comes to safety on this issue, but as far as I can see the signals from peoples indoor wireless routers is much more powerfull.
I spent many years in the RAF, living on base. There are far more "deadly" emissions, (microwave and Radar,) flying around places like these and I've suffered no ill effects, (apart from becoming a "Born Again Hippy" since I left.)
Have these objectors heard of the name Ned Ludd?
How many of these objectors have a microwave oven? When was the last time they had it checked for emissions, (if it's old, it needs checking. If it's been moved or possibly "knocked", it needs checking.)
Hippy-John. It's for that very reason I won't allow a microwave oven in our house. It's not that they can't be made secure. But, how do you trust the manafacturing process with such lethal items? And of course, even if you get a safe one, age may eventually render the thing dangerous.
