RMIT Distinguished Lecture Series - Why Wi-Fi matters: the past, present and future of a social technology

Distinguished Professor Julian Thomas reviews the history of wi-fi, showing how a technology originally designed to connect cash registers came to play an important social role. It describes Wi-Fi’s immediate prospects, including its relations to high speed 5G cellular services, and its possible longer-run social futures, which may hinge upon its uniquely decentralised and inclusive capabilities for automation.

From café culture to home schooling, remote community networks, and smart cities, Wi-Fi is an invisible but fundamental element of contemporary life. Loosely regulated, low-cost, and largely overlooked by social researchers, this technology has driven the rise of the smartphone and broadband internet, and is now a vital element in the next wave of automation. During the pandemic, household Wi-Fi has been critically important for connected households, enabling new ways of working from home and maintaining social links. At the same time, the closure of libraries, campuses and other public Wi-Fi locations has exacerbated disadvantage for people without ready access to the internet.

Julian Thomas is Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, and a Distinguished Professor in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. His latest book is Wi-Fi (Polity 2021; with Ellie Rennie and Rowan Wilken). Other projects include the Australian Digital Inclusion Index (Telstra, 2016-), Internet on the Outstation: The Digital Divide and Remote Aboriginal Communities (INC, 2016), and The Informal Media Economy (Polity, 2015). Thomas was elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2017. He is a member of the Academy Council, and is also a Board Member of ACCAN, the peak body representing Australian communications users’ interests.

 

Creative Commons, attributed to Alessio Milan https://www.flickr.com/photos/malexorg/223557160/  Licence link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

 

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torres strait flag

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business.

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