Magicbike is the wheel deal

Yury Gitman hasn't reinvented the wheel, but with Magicbikes, he has extended the reach of the wireless Internet by putting the technology on tires.

Created by Gitman and his Wireless Art students at New York City's New School University's Parsons School of Design, the Magicbike is a conventional bicycle outfitted with off-the-shelf Wi-Fi access technology that distributes free Internet connectivity wherever it travels — it's a hot spot on wheels, enabling instant Web access for cultural events, emergency access and public demonstrations. “The idea is that now Wi-Fi is everywhere you want to be,” Gitman said. “I can carry access along with me.”

Along with collaborator Carlos Gomez de Llarena, Gitman previously created the Wi-Fi access point scavenger hunt game Node Runner (WR, Feb. 2003), which won the prestigious Golden Nica Award, Austria's highest award for electronic art. (Past winners include Linux creator Linus Torvalds.) Magicbike began taking form last summer during Gitman's frequent bicycling trips around New York: while the idea behind Node Runner was to foster the notion that access points are virtually everywhere across the city, the idea behind Magicbike was to foster the notion that access points could go virtually anywhere in the world.

“What I envisioned was replicating the idea of repeaters and wireless bridges — like you might find on the tops of buildings or on mountaintops — that extend the infrastructure to areas that don't have it,” Gitman said. “I like the bicycle better than I like the car — it's more politically active and socially conscious. I thought if I could put a repeater on my bicycle, I could find hot spots that were far away and point a directional antenna toward them.”

Gitman's basic ideas were sound, but he struggled for months to find the right combination of off-the-shelf technologies. “I wanted to create something easily replicated and reproducible, with no soldering or programming,” he said. “What I eventually came up with is an iBook with extra Wi-Fi adapters and an antenna. And a heavily insulated bag — the equipment is not ruggedized for this purpose. I still can't think of any other application we use where we're moving and the computer is still on.”

The Magicbike made its public debut on Dec. 11, when Gitman and his students descended onto the underground subway platform at NYC's Union Square to send their first subterranean e-mail to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, copying New School University President Bob Kerrey and Parsons Dean Randy Swearer. The event was the culmination of a Parsons classroom project called “Wireless Bikes and Urbanites,” a collaboration with the Education Division at nonprofit new media arts organization Eyebeam.

“Wireless Bikes and Media” is certainly not the first wireless-themed class Parsons has mounted — in March 2002, WR profiled Parsons professor Richard Yelle, whose students developed a biodegradable mobile handset made of flower seeds. “I thought the Magicbike idea was fabulous — looking at sustainable transportation and the use of wireless technology is a neat extension of the school's work,” said Parsons Chair of Digital Design Colleen Macklin. “I'm happy to see the universality of this kind of idea and how people can connect to it right away.”

That universality is not lost on Gitman, either. “Let's say ten years from now, there are a million of these bikes in China and India. The technology could be powered by bicycle generators on the wheels. It's like the infrastructure comes awake with the city — it's very efficient, and it's there when it's needed. You're building an infrastructure where people are alive, instead of putting a tower in the middle of a city or an antenna on top of a building. It's infrastructure located where you actually are.”

So did Mayor Bloomberg ever respond to that historic first e-mail? “No,” Gitman said. “It makes me sad to think the first e-mail out of the subway was spam.”