RMIT Distinguished Lecture Series – Why Wi-Fi Matters: The Past, Present and Future of a Social Technology

Discover insights from distinguished Professor Julian Thomas, who will review the history of Wi-Fi – showing how a technology originally designed to connect cash registers came to play an important social role. He will describe 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. This webinar will be held on 7 September 2021 at 02.00 PM AEST / 11.00 AM WIB.

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).

Register here.