MOPORT.org, a free service for generating and sharing mobile phone reports, is launched this month, in time to allow people attending the Republican National Convention to collectively report about the event in real-time.
Moport wants “to balance powerful vested interests and keep the media honest through simple, but tested, means.”
Other actions of mass-activism at NRC were listed by Paul Schmelzer in Eyeteeth.
A new wave of activists will use decentralized and distributed technologies to level the playing field with law enforcement.
• Flash radiojacking: Jeremijenko and the Bureau of Inverse Technology, will use a special transmitter to break into radio frequencies reserved for corporate stations, giving bursts of information so brief that the FCC can’t lock onto their transmission location.
• Bikes Against Bush: Joshua Kinberg will hit the streets on an “internet-enabled tactical media ‘weapon’ for non-violent creative resistance.” (see also B.A.B.)
• Backpack broadcast: the collective neuroTransmitter will be toting com_muni_ports throughout the convention. These low-power, backpack-mounted radio transmitters will provide localized, on-the-fly media broadcasts, bearing witness, live, to events you won’t hear about on local Clear Channel stations.
• WiFi on Wheels: Yury Gitman will be pedaling his MagicBike during the convention. Offering free internet connectivity wherever it goes, it’ll wire the UK-based collective OpenSorcery so members can play a military simulator online and on the streets of New York using high-power projectors (see Hotspot on Wheels).
Operations in Urban Terrain (OUT), a first-person-shooter game, aims to critique the militarization of civilian life following 9/11 by literally broadcasting the game’s violence on city walls (Wireless gaming urban intervention.)
• Inflated Crowd Counts: When the demonstration ends, police will inevitably lowball crowd sizes, while activists will present overly optimistic numbers. The Bureau of Inverse Technology will calculate verifiable figures, thanks to a wireless video camera tethered to a helium balloon high above the action. A rollerblader will maneuver the balloon throughout the entire crowd while the high-resolution camera beams visual data to laptops on the ground. The result: a composite image that’ll be analyzed by software similar to the kind used for counting microscopic cells in labs. “If Bush can dismiss this as a ‘focus group’ with the wave of his hand, how do you answer that? You have to have a higher standard of evidence, you have to have more compelling images,” says Jeremijenko. “And we end up with a family aero-portrait–a self-documentation of our action on the streets.”
From Coin-operated