Wi-Fi networks are materialized media and Internet is the content. We used to go online by wireless or wire therefore we ignore easily the difference of the connection methods. The ignorance appear significantly after the popularity of Wi-Fi wireless. Because We don’t need to stay at the fixed point to connect to Internet so “place” is not dominant role to affect us cyber life. In contrast to 3G and GPRS, they allowed users to access Internet with high-end mobile phone and the expensive fee.
Wi-Fi has transformed importance of the place in wire networks into multi-places or Auge’s “non-place”. We can access Internet via different Wi-Fi hotspots. If Wi-Fi service providers still expand their Wi-Fi hotspots, Wi-Fi space for the users seem never-completed. Wi-Fi users can watch youtube, writing blogs, tweet and receiving email via Wi-Fi hotspots in cities. Wi-Fi networks are materialized by physical spaces and they also transform cafe, telephone booths, and convenience stores into visible and touchable Wi-Fi access points. Hotspot owners usually show advertisement in users’ login page. Internet is not media itself but the content of Wi-Fi. Municipal and commercial Wi-Fi providers have their different consideration about how and where they roll up their Wi-Fi services. Wi-Fi distributions are the reflections of political and economic complex. The more Wi-Fi access points they can install, the more content and information they can provide and control.
Our visualisation presents the route not the areas. Because the routes have directions and they can show the closeness of different Wi-Fi access points. House image aims to imitate the family member to express the membership in the same Wi-Fi networks.
3G networks didn’t reshape our routes and place.
Mobile phone networks seem to provide the same mobility of Wi-Fi but they didn’t reproduce our places and routes. 3G connection has the different login method so the users can avoid the advertisement page. They don’t need to incorporate the physical premises so they can’t reproduce our territory and places.
