Negroponte switch
Encyclopedia
Professor Nicholas Negroponte
Nicholas Negroponte
Nicholas Negroponte is an American architect best known as the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also known as the founder of the One Laptop per Child Association ....

of the Media Lab
Media lab
Media lab is a term used for interdisciplinary organizations, collectives or spaces with the main focus on new media, digital culture and technology....

 at MIT originated the meme, which has since been associated with his name. As more mobile devices need connections to the data network, and bandwidths required and deliverable in wired or fibre-optic systems grow, it becomes steadily less sensible to use wireless broadcast as a way of communicating with static installations.

At some point the switch takes place, as the limited radio bandwidth is reallocated to data service to mobile equipment, and television and other media move to cable.

Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books...

 an author and also sometime Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...

 activist has described the process of the switch as unwiring, which is also a move away from a global internetwork which in reality passes through many chokepoints where data may be controlled and inspected toward one which uses available bandwidth frugally by passing communications in a mesh and avoids chokepoints.

Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books...

 and Charles Stross
Charles Stross
Charles David George "Charlie" Stross is a British writer of science fiction, Lovecraftian horror and fantasy. He was born in Leeds.Stross specialises in hard science fiction and space opera...

 write of it, firstly in work associated with the Electronic Frontier Foundation
Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation is an international non-profit digital rights advocacy and legal organization based in the United States...

 and other techno-futurist groupings, and secondly in their collaboration on a novel in progress Unwirers, which is published in its evolving state.

The blending of civil liberty and technology may be considered as an effort to reimplement the Internet in the interests of the users, freedom and democracy.
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