Taking international communication off the grid

Take international communication off the grid

Grab the dominant ideas about how international communications should be conducted and take them off line.

If after looking at it, it is a good idea, feel free to put it back online – after all, some ideas have stood the test of time purely because they are effective. But make the idea earn its place, as you would any new idea. Don’t just leave it online because it was on when you walked in the room.

Going off the grid

OK, if you’re comfortable with online / offline, what about going further and living off the grid? Put another way, Wandren PD should be about finding new ideas and re-evaluating the ways we use old or currently redundant ideas.

“Off grid living”, whether you consider it in terms of accessing utilities or avoiding industrial-scale collection of personal data, requires a different way of thinking to find ideas which produce alternative solutions. Consider energy supply: photovoltaic cells are an example of a new alternative to getting electricity from the grid, while wind and water power are adaptations of old ideas which were once largely considered redundant within “developed” societies.

“Off grid living” can also be the reframing of how a problem is considered, thinking of it as a “group” rather than “individual” issue. To take a basic example from those trying to put a little less of themselves on the grid: if you think you are giving away too much data about yourself and your lifestyle habits because you use a loyalty card at your local supermarket, you could protect that data simply by throwing your loyalty card in the bin

But what if you love your loyalty card but don’t want the supermarket to know what you are buying regularly? As an individual, you’re in a straightforward dilemma – use it and give up information or don’t use it and lose benefits.

If this is presented as a group concern, however, there might be another alternative, provided you’re willing to put in some effort to organise and possible some extra time to execute. Get some friends involved, preferably friends who spend about the same amount as you do but buy different items. Simply keep passing the loyalty cards between you, preferably not in a regularly repeating sequence. Assuming you’re all spending similar amounts and buying different things, the data will be a satisfying mess but the points on your cards will be roughly the same.

I’m not particularly interested in debating whether loyalty cards are a fantastic idea or the evil spawn of data-obsessed corporations. What’s vastly more interesting is this: are there situations in which these alternatives can give us ideas that are more powerful than some of our current approaches to communication?

The development of technology has provided us with numerous new opportunities and new challenges. How we are able to adapt and adopt, how we seek out new possibilities, even in the most unlikely of places will be important – along with knowing when the old way is still probably the best way.