Wired on Friday Danny O'Brien: I'm so lulled by politicians. They can talk me into almost anything. I'm unprepared, you see. Politicos rarely visit the world of technology, and when they do, they offer such a smooth contrast to everyday geeks: all carefully-chosen words, softly spoken, full of ingenious subterfuge. Compare that to standard geek: generally blurted, half-shouted barks of fiercely rational honesty.
So when, a fortnight ago, I sat in a crowd of high-school kids in the hot sun of San Jose, and listened to not just the mayor of this Silicon Valley city, but also the lord mayor of Dublin himself, Councillor Royston Brady, I was ready to be taken in with all the mesmeric power that local politicians can wield.
They had it easy. The topic was WiFi, the cheap wireless networking technology that's been close to my heart now for four years or so.
The mayor of San Jose had committed to rolling out free WiFi access to downtown San Jose, and was out in the sun to officially activate the first set of access points. City mayors here have fair bit of political and financial clout. Mayor Ron Gonzalez oversees the eleventh largest city in the US, and a budget of over half a billion dollars. He wears a fine suit, and a smart haircut. He seemed a little jealous of the lord mayor's chain of office, though, and dragged him onto the platform "to add a bit of dignity". (Dublin is twinned with San Jose, and Mr Brady was here as close to St Patrick's day as a Dublin mayor can afford to be in California).
Together, along with some assorted schoolchildren (who I believe are supplied to American politicians by the crateload for such occasions), they turned on the WiFi access points. The access points provide wireless internet connectivity to nearby laptop and PDA users (who own the right WiFi hardware).
As it happens, I had my laptop. I snuck away from the speeches to have a go.
Away from the hypnotic suggestions of the speeches, I quickly ascertained that there were a few problems with providing downtown-wide WiFi access here. Firstly - and this is one that the lord mayor and myself would have spotted, even if everyone else is too accustomed to it - San Jose is sunny. The WiFi nodes that the city have installed only work outside. And you can't use laptops in the bright sun.
Still, I squinted in the pencil-thin shade of the Circle of Palms, thinking how hot Royston looked in his chain, poked at my laptop with one hand (no seats here: San Joseans don't sit in the sun) and discovered the next problem.
A WiFi-enabled laptop shows you all the nearest networks you can connect to. I had to wheel around for some time before I caught San Jose's municipal signal. The problem wasn't signal strength: the problem was there were too many other networks in the way. The Fairmont hotel, behind the mayoral duo; the small coffee shop downstream of the fidgeting schoolchildren encampment; a couple of nearby offices; even a scent of the museum of technology across the park from us. Commendable though the mayor's dedication to lighting his downtown with internet connectivity was, much of it was already lit.
Some of those networks were private, of course - Wi-Fi used as it was originally intended, as an indoor convenience for business local area networks. The Fairmont network was for its guests only (they pay $13 for poolside internet). But the café and the museum were both free for anyone to use.
That makes sense: Wi-Fi is increasingly a free perk that tempts you into a particular café or bookshop around here: sort of the digital equivalent of nice comfy seats. Starbucks charges for its network, so the local coffee shop's free network offer pulls in their best customers.
Given that, does it make sense for the municipality to offer its own free network? Well, it does no harm, I suppose. San Jose is certainly attempting to do everything to tempt the right kind of people into its still somewhat deserted downtown. Their service is a little over-engineered, but may fill in some gaps. It's certainly a temptation to be able to process your mail under the palms, and when there's a bit of cloud, some of us may actually use it.
I corner Royston after the ceremony, and ask the obvious question: will you be doing the same for Dublin any time soon? The young lord mayor gives his considered answer, which is "I don't see why not!" That's politicianpeak for "Nice idea, but I'm not going to put my head on the line to get it done."
And, you know, - and you'll excuse me if I was temporarily transfixed by Councillor Brady's silver tongue - he may have a point. Without the good mayor - or the rest of his council - even knowing what Wi-Fi might be, Dublin has been slowly filling with access points. From the dozens of hotels running O22 nodes, to the free Chester Beatty Library to the open access nodes collected by the DublinWAN volunteer group athttp://dublinwan.org/, there's already a fair bit of wireless internet availability in the city and across the State.
Dublin's web of WiFi has its own problems. The brick walls of Dublin severely curtail the coverage of each node - not a problem most of San Jose has, being built mainly of wood. And you'll look far sillier in Dublin pointing a laptop in every direction, trying to sniff out a nearby node. (Here you just blend in with everyone else.) But it's getting there. And, like San Jose, it's needed neither local government nor, indeed, a big centrally-funded shindig to kickstart it. Just a bunch of local Net citizens who'd rather not wear the chains of wired connectivity when they take their freedom of their own city.
