Abstract:
In one of the more bizarre social experiments of recent years, homeless people in Austin, Texas were fitted with a 4G mifi device and turned into wi-fi hotspots. For a small charge the homeless or ‘hotspot managers’ as they were branded would provide wireless reception so that the rest of the public could use their smartphones and tablets. Was this merely as some claimed a contemporary version of the ‘Big Issue’, where culture and information were sold at street level, where a positive interaction between the public and the homeless could take place? Or was it something else entirely? The incident circulated widely on the blogosphere and in social media, generating an intense level of debate. Then just as quickly the discussion moved on.
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