Free Network Foundation
The Free Network Foundation was an American non-governmental organization active in the early 2010s.[1] Its work focused on research and advocacy for wireless community networks. Its efforts to provide the Occupy movement with internet connectivity were the subject of the Motherboard documentary Free The Network.[2]
Operations[edit]
The Free Network Foundation was co-founded by Isaac Wilder and Charles Wyble.[3] Wilder was 21 years old during the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, and was concerned about the centralization and control of physical Critical Internet infrastructure in the hands of a few Tier 1 networks.[4]
In a Motherboard documentary Free The Network, Wilder went to jail for 36 hours during the Occupy movement and returned to find that his Free Network Foundation laptops and networking equipment had been smashed and destroyed by a garbage truck.[4]
Following the clearing of Zuccotti Park, the Free Network Foundation moved its base of operations to Wilder's hometown of Kansas City, Missouri.[5] There it aimed to provide an alternative to Google Fiber's inaugural network.[6] Its commons-oriented approach to digital infrastructure has been cited as a model by numerous researchers and other organizations.[7][8][9][10]
References[edit]
- ^ Drew, Jesse (2013). A Social History of Contemporary Democratic Media. Routledge. p. 152. ISBN 9781135117559.
- ^ Carr, Erin Lee (28 March 2012). "Free The Network". Motherboard. VICE.
- ^ Lee, Newton (2014). Facebook Nation: Total Information Awareness (2nd ed. 2014 ed.). New York, NY: Springer New York. ISBN 978-1-4939-1740-2.
- ^ a b Brian A., Anderson (2012-03-28). "Movement aims to decentralize the Internet". CNN. Retrieved 2023-12-30.
- ^ Murphy, Kate (2013-11-13). "Home Wireless Network Keeps the Snoops Away". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-12-30.
- ^ Terrell, Whitney (2013-03-20). "Network Free K.C.: Kansas City gives it up for Google". Harper's Magazine. ISSN 0017-789X. Retrieved 2023-12-30.
- ^ Dazed (2013-06-14). "Free Your Network". Dazed. Retrieved 2023-12-30.
- ^ Odell, Jenny (2019). How to do nothing: resisting the attention economy. Brooklyn, NY London: Melville House. pp. 172–174. ISBN 978-1-61219-750-0.
- ^ Serrano Tellería, Ana, ed. (2017). Between the public and private in mobile communication. Routledge studies in new media and cyberculture. New York, London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN 978-1-315-39928-7.
- ^ Kalantzis-Cope, Phillip (2017). The work and play of the mind in the information age: whose property?. Frontiers of globalization series. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-319-64650-3.