Editorial
This book surveys a group of terrains central to the emergence of Wireless Networks providing a careful insight on political, technical, legal and artistic concerns about what it means to populate the electromagnetic field with wireless waves.
This publication debates and focuses on the construction of open networks which use wireless technology without rejecting the possibilities now staring to be available concerning the use of optical fiber. The concept of open network refers to the use of any technology providing a sustainable solution which allows increasing degrees of freedom for knowing, accessing and modifying a telecommunication network.
Communication has become central to our information societies. Nevertheless, boundaries between public policy, engineering, urban planning and activist groups are constantly being shaped by agreements or disagreements on how, why and who should be able to build, manage and access telecommunication infrastructures. There are different ways to face the existing diversity within Europe as far as its legal, methodological and conceptual nature, despite common European directives.
Whether we think of a scarce resource to be regulated by a restricted cluster of actors or by an open spectrum, it remains unclear how these different actors interact and posit their arguments. With that warning in mind, the authors of this book share a common feeling that albeit much of the work of wireless communities has been going on for years, little has been documented or accounted in an attempt to trace back the ties these communities have displayed within their territories.
Here you will find an effort to foster public debate envisioning how public policies, activists, business models, Internet governance and artists come to arrangements that, arguably enough, will define how we manage these digital infrastructures that we inhabit. In this spirit, we recognize that far from being settled, regulations on radioelectric spectrum are constantly negotiated due to their increasing importance for local, regional and global economies.
As this negotiation relies on several layers of arguments, this book is also an attempt to entangle such concerns and highlight workable initiatives that have aimed to a symmetric regulation where citizens can express themselves and have some decision power. It is, we argue, of the utmost importance to review work and literature generated around these initiatives precisely at this moment that many political and commercial policies suggest a shortening in the possibilities of building common projects regarding radioelectric spectrum or similar technologies.
Common agreements between European free wireless networks point towards the need to clarify issues concerning the electromagnetic spectrum ownership and the very idea of the commons. One of our major goals is, thus, to state the importance of promoting a debate in which different social groups are involved. Only by these means will it be possible to put pressure on the Telecommunication European lobbies, which usually just happen to take advantage of this lack of debate and provide the lay citizen with opaque information.

Edited by: Yann Bona + Efraín Foglia.
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