August 02, 2002

WiFi and the WAR prefix

In Doc Searls' blog on Wednesday, he asked me how I felt about using Wireless Access Reconnaissance as an acronym fill-in for all of the war- prefixes currently in vogue around WiFi, like Wardriving, Warchalking, Warwalking, Warbiking, etc., etc, etc.

Frankly, I don't like the use of the prefix at all, and I encourage people to think of better words when describing the community usage ofwireless broadband access, because like it or not, these military analogies only server to heighten the "cracker, hacker, lawbreaker" image that has become associated with wireless community activists in many of the mainstream press.

I suppose if we're going to put an acronym around the WAR prefix post-hoc, I'd rather use:

Wireless Activist Reality

Enjoy the meme. Posted by dsifry at August 2, 2002 12:11 AM | TrackBack | View blog reactions