Borrowing Bandwidth
In some parts of the country, Internet connectivity might soon become a public good. Consider the Bay area, where I recently spent a few days house hunting.
Throughout the process, my girlfriend and I were an elite, well-organized strike force of planning and paperwork. We spent much of the week prior to our trip carefully screening Craigslist posts, making appointments, and completely filling three days of itinerary.
Once we had landed and were actually driving around the peninsula, there was little time to spare. In the mornings, we saved a daisy chain of driving directions on our laptop. Though we occasionally made it through two or three appointments on plan, a midday cancellation or two would eventually shatter the chain.
OK - on the road, laptop planted squarely on lap, require directions to a place ten miles away. Struggling with a road map like some dad taking his kids to the Hoover Dam in a wood-paneled station wagon is naturally out of the question. What to do?
Well, realizing that we were driving through a major tech hub spotted with an abundance of wireless access points, we decided to try a little freeloading. My girlfriend would drive past a row of houses, an apartment complex, or a mini-mall while I scanned the proverbial ether for able candidates. Conveniently, a large number of those I found were unsecured and had MAC filtering disabled. We never stalked access points for more than five minutes before hitting pay dirt.
Imagine if gas behaved this way: we’re running low - quick, drain some from that car over there. You have to admit that, especially with the current outlook, that would be pretty handy…
