Wi-Fi Networks are the New Elementary Units of Wireless Cities.

This essay aims to explore how growing and ubiquitous Wi-Fi networks reshape
urban landscapes and the collective identity. I have conducted my fieldworks in
London, New York, Chicago, Hong Kong and Taipei. The fieldwork is composed of
participant observation on local Wi-Fi users and the collection of the information of
Wi-Fi access points. This essay defines Wi-Fi access points as another type of ‘house’
and the connection is constructed by the ‘conceptual metaphor’ proposed by linguist
George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson. Besides, anthropologists Claude Levi-
Strauss’s study of ‘house societies’ and Janet Hoskins’s ‘biographical objects’ are
employed to analyze how people build and manifest their collective identity via
sharing Internet connection as body substance.

Jung-Hua Liu,
PhD Doctoral Fine Art Degree,
University of Leeds, UK