I am a 4G Hotspot...The Homeless Had Been Turned Into Human WiFi Hotspots

EACH year programmers, social media entrepreneurs and technology enthusiasts convene in Austin, Texas, to learn about the Next Big Thing.

Previous South By Southwest Interactive festivals have featured Facebook, Twitter and the mobile phone app foursquare - which all allowed technology fans to tell the world that they were, at that very moment, in Austin at a technology conference.

This year, the most talked about innovation was standing outside on various street corners. The homeless of Austin, or at least 13 of them, had been turned into human WiFi hotspots. 

Can be summarized thusly: An impossibly-named marketing company called Bartle Bogle Hegarty is doing a little human science experiment called Homeless Hotspots. It gives out 4G hotspots to homeless people along with a promotional t-shirt. The shirt doesn't say, "I have a 4G hotspot." It says, "I am a 4G hotspot."

All of them had been equipped with mobile WiFi devices, allowing up to five of the passing laptop and tablet bearers to connect to the internet. They were paid dollars 20 a day and allowed to keep whatever they made. They charge $2 for 15 minutes of surfing time. 

Leading the drive to update homeless people for the digital age was BBH Labs, the "innovation" wing of a Manhattan marketing agency that caused a stir last year by briefly equipping four homeless men in New York with Twitter accounts.

The company noted that America's homeless were still busy in many cities trying to raise money by selling magazines, publications that were under pressure from digital media. It stressed that the homeless were still in "Beta testing" for their new role, but if it proved successful, "we hope to see it adopted on a broader scale".

Before long, perhaps even the homeless man in Guildford High Street, who wears a hat made of foliage and a sign announcing that he is from "Special Branch", could be offering shoppers a chance to update their Facebook pages.

Yet the project has already provoked criticism from the iPad users it was meant to serve. "I've got a troubleshooting issue that I hope you can resolve: my homeless hotspot keeps wandering out of range," wrote a correspondent in the site's comments section. 

A correspondent for Wired feared that the homeless were being turned into commodities, or worse, "walking, talking billboards".


http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/marketers-use-homeless-to-become-mobile-4g-hotspots-at-technology-fair-sxsw/story-fnb64oi6-1226299255132
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/sxsw_in_a_nutshell_homeless_people_as_hotspots.php