The off.networks community
The off.networks community
The offline networks or ‘off.networks’ community has started as an attempt to bring together researchers, activists and artists that work on the idea of an offline network, operating outside the Internet. Such networks could range from artistic projects (eg. deadrops or wifitagger) and "personal networks" (eg. PirateBox.cc or subnod.es), to community networks (eg. commotionwireless.net) and large city-scale mesh networks (eg. guifi.net, freifunk.net, awmn.net). In their second scheduled meeting during transmediale Festival, the members of this network wish to make their first effort to build a diverse and dynamic community around the design, implementation and deployment of offline networks in different contexts. They wish to reflect critically on the role of such local networks in shaping the evolving hybrid urban space and in addressing the threats which are posed by internet corporations and surveillance states on citizens’ privacy and freedom of speech.