5 BARS ON THE PLAYA THIS YEAR (No, not the drinking kind)

Kimo · Post by **Kimo** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:17 am

While there may in fact be cellular service ON THE PLAYA this year as confirmed by the people who are actually there, what we donâ€™t know is which provider(s) have service out there. Just because AT&T might, that doesnâ€™t mean that Sprint will, or Verizon or T-Mobile. While this can be great for making arrangements to find your campsite with your campmates, It would be sad to see people walking around with phone to ear, kinda eerie to think about that. So I for one will use my phone to contact my campmates upon arrival, and then turn it off for the remainder of the week.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:19 am

maybe squirt guns for those "on the phone"........

Kimo · Post by **Kimo** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:30 am

Maybe by my posting this everyone will read and then all try to use their cell phones and not be able to because of the low capacity of the infrastructure the carriers have placed out there. Thereby rendering them useless. Maybe we can all agree to use them only in an EXTREME emergency, and not to check in with the kids at home.

Here's some more onfo on capacity issues and WHO has coverage:

From the BmanNYC list:

Sprint works in Gerlach, Foor Shooor
ATnT should be up and running for the event in Black Rock City. The
gear is installed at Frog Pond. They are just having a hard time
hitting their satellite.
The Catch?
Something like 34 lines for ATnT and 26 for Verizon.
No text, no digital.
Yup, getting a busy circuit signal should stop a lot of the nonsense.
Splinter
On comm temporarily at Black Rock City Commissary

Elorrum · Post by **Elorrum** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 9:54 am

Shit on cell phones on the playa. I so hope this isn't true.

phil · Post by **phil** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 11:26 am

I read somewhere there were only 35 or 40 slots on one system and fewer on the other. shrug - if people let themselves get bugged by cell phone use at BM, that's not my problem. I'm saving myself for being bugged by jerkoffs on gas-powered mopeds. :-> Let the cellphones roll.

Elorrum · Post by **Elorrum** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 4:41 pm

I'm such a luddite. I am bugged by the absence of courtesy in general, cell phones specifically, so the playa was one place I thought I might not be bugged by it. whatever. O.k. Phil, you take the scooters, I'll take the cell phones. No need to overlap.

DrPeffer · Post by **DrPeffer** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 4:57 pm

I only hope that people have the good sense to keep any mobile phone use EXTREMELY discreet (ie: In your fucking tent, by your fucking self, not walking along the Esplanade, shouting/giggling into it).

Checking in on an emergency situation at home, I can understand. Messaging people joining you later in the week as to your location on the Playa: Fine. ABSOLUTELY MUST contact work for something critical, I can even understand. But woe are we if, from now on, one comes to The Burn to find everyone with a piece of metal pressed against their head, chatting about how "We're at 4:00 and B. Where are you guys? Oh yeah? How is it over there? Should we come? Duuuude! You gotta see this guy spinning in front of me here!"

I'll gleefully loudly and publicly shame any obnoxious mobile phone user I encounter on the Playa, and I encourage fellow Burners of Conscience to do the same.

This is very troubling news, indeed.

: (

C.f.M. · Post by **C.f.M.** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 5:01 pm

Elorrum wrote:I'm such a luddite. I am bugged by the absence of courtesy in general, cell phones specifically, so the playa was one place I thought I might not be bugged by it. whatever.

You're not a luddite, and neither am I for agreeing whole-heartedly with you.

I just got my first cell phone last month, and have no intention of looking at it, once I get on-site. Not to find friends, nada.

If I wanted to talk on my cellphone and check my FB, I'd stay the fuck home.

Bob · Post by **Bob** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 6:11 pm

Thousands of sparkly SUVs and RVs and sound systems and electrical grids and blinky lights and a cafe and radar perimeter security and valet camping service and a freaking vanity airport, and you people whine like little peeping baby birds about telephones. Grow the fuck up.

motskyroonmatick · Post by **motskyroonmatick** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 6:59 pm

Bob,

You are the man! I appreciate the straight dope you lay down.

Thanks!

Thanks for all those pointers on your site too.

DrPeffer · Post by **DrPeffer** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 7:02 pm

[quote="Bob"]Thousands of sparkly SUVs and RVs and sound systems and electrical grids and blinky lights and a cafe and radar perimeter security and valet camping service and a freaking vanity airport, and you people whine like little peeping baby birds about telephones. Grow the fuck up.[/quote]

Sorry, Bob...I beg to differ. Personally, I think its an awesome thing to see the ridiculous heights some will go to on the Playa to create a total experience for themselves, even if it means they have to satisfy their candy-ass desires by having air conditioning or what-have-you. Since it all must turn back to bare desert shortly after Labor Day, I say "If you've got the imagination and the energy, more power to you!"

However, one of the most treasured aspects of The Burn to me, and I think to many others, is the idea that you're "on your own"...That you have to rely on whimsy and randomness to carry you through the Burn. Knowing you can dial your friends anywhere anytime to hook up with them, or that you can be mentally pulled off the Playa by a non-emergency incoming call makes it a little less...Dangerous? Freeing?

My point again isn't that nobody should ever use a phone on the Playa. Just keep it to yourself, is all I'm saying. I just know how much I hate that shit at the fucking MALL, even. On the Playa? Fucking BLECH!!

Bob · Post by **Bob** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 7:09 pm

Somebody should turn off those GPS satellites, it's giving me a headache!!!

wedeliver · Post by **wedeliver** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 7:20 pm

Bob wrote:Thousands of sparkly SUVs and RVs and sound systems and electrical grids and blinky lights and a cafe and radar perimeter security and valet camping service and a freaking vanity airport, and you people whine like little peeping baby birds about telephones. Grow the fuck up.

I don't expect cell phones to change my experience, if anything it might be helpful.

DoctorIknow · Post by **DoctorIknow** » Sat Aug 22, 2009 7:30 pm

This is great!

I'm building an adapter for my handlebars so I can text while biking!

I hear the playa is pretty firm, so maybe I can even use both thumbs!

Elorrum · Post by **Elorrum** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 6:56 am

If you had to deal all day with people in a service environment talking on their phones after they came to you and asked for your assistance, before their phone rang, and listen to the inane conversation that instantly takes precedence over your work; if you had to manage people who didn't think the hours they spent a week on their phones was actually "not working" perhaps you would have had the same knee jerk reaction that I had. A great percentage of cell phone use is more about sucking on a pacifier ("Hi. I called to say that I am by myself, and I don't like it.") than it is about communicating important information. I don't think it is an issue of me growing the fuck up. You are correct in saying that put into the perspective of all the stuff going on that it's not a huge thing, but I didn't mean that I think cell phones will ruin my burn. I guess it is old fashioned to say a community is the people you are with in physical space. Yet, the event does have restricitons we are not used to in our everyday world: We can't hop in our car and run errands; we mostly don't have indoor plumbing. Without phones, community is who you are actually in the physical presense of. The cost of that was having to find alternative ways to hook up with friends, and loss of easy emergency communication. You are on your own.

I'm trying to escape to a place that seems to be incrementally changing into the place I'm trying to take a vacation from. It may be that that is a part of growing the fuck older that I do not like. Thankfully there's a long long long way to go.

Igneouss · Post by **Igneouss** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 7:22 am

As a photographer I sincerely hope I can get some shots of people riding bikes while on cell phone. Preferably in costume and on decorated bikes. If I am really lucky I can get a shot of an accident!

People in incongruous costumes that have a cell phones might be fun too!

This will be fun.

unjonharley · Post by **unjonharley** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 7:56 am

WHAT?? no tv on the playa again ths year.. can you live without reruns of According To Jim¿¿

Its a f..in camping trip..

Bob · Post by **Bob** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 8:53 pm

Retighten the cotter pins on your wooden tricycle and fuel up on your carbide lanterns, old man.

wedeliver · Post by **wedeliver** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 9:11 pm

Elorrum wrote:........I'm trying to escape to a place that seems to be incrementally changing into the place I'm trying to take a vacation from. It may be that that is a part of growing the fuck older that I do not like. Thankfully there's a long long long way to go.

I might live a dream, but I don't think you can escape, (I mean really get away) on this planet anymore. There is nowhere to go where you can think you are the first person there, like when we were kids.

but I do think we can escape to a people, we can all be the first ones there at the same time.

And these people, that go on this art camping trip, help me escape..

i do not fear anything that can happen at BRC, if there is anyplace, or anypeople on earth, where if it's meant to happen, it will. At BRC!

Talynt · Post by **Talynt** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 9:25 pm

I'm young enough that for the majority of my adult life I've had my wireless connection to the world.

I'm always amazed at stories from the past though, with no phones, internet, texts, etc. How do you go out for a night on the town if you can't keep track of everyone you could possibly run in to all night?

Burning man takes you back decades, back to a time when you went out with who you were with, and you made friends with the people around you because you had no way to coalesce your social safety net around you.

If you need 4 inch wide candycane colored duct tape at bm, there's a very real chance that someone will run up to you, unsolicited, with it and a cheeseburger for you. The ONLY thing that I found doesn't follow this serendipitous rule is the total inability to stick together with your friends, and I'm happy about it. It reaffirms the feeling that for one week, the saying "a stranger is just a friend you haven't met yet" becomes a fundamental rule of physics.

Being able to talk or text to each other would destroy this. Being able to talk or text to the OUTSIDE WORLD (or g-d forbid, facebook) would actually destroy immediacy, one of the principles

Jmarcus · Post by **Jmarcus** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 9:43 pm

from a practical matter, I understand the problems with no service. I didn't go to bm 2005, but the problem with getting hurricane katrina information out to the New Orleans burners shows that there is a case for extreme situations.

But I find the lack of phones interesting. I'd LOVE to do some sort of study on how information spreads through an unwired crowd. I mean, even the newspapers are spotty and infrequent.

However, its pretty safe to say that eventually there will be cell phone service on the playa, and the capacity to back it. Therefore, the proactive thing to do is to come up with guidelines NOW, so that we're prepared.

I think the hard and fast rule would be relatively simple, just implementing them would be the tricky part. How about:

1. Cell phones are for emergency use only.

The only exception to this I can see would be enabling art installations to do some sort of connectivity thing. Personally, I think this again should still fall under Info In Only, or such. Webcams just so people at work can see the critical tits parade, or really anything I can imagine you wanting to send OUT, shouldn't qualify.

It up to the creativity of the community to figure out what would be interesting to bring in, and I'm not going to limit that. But I am wary of allowing, well, the off-playa world to influence the event. I don't want internet enabled fire cannons, for example. But perhaps a dj that remixes incoming internet radio streams wouldn't offend my sensibilities too much.

So.

1. Cell phones for personal use are for true emergencies only.
2. Art projects must be IIO-oriented (of course a little data has to go out)

what do y'all think about this? Do you like these guidelines? What else should we consider? And how do we enforce them? Do you think shame alone will work, as with moop? I'd actually like something stronger, maybe someone can summon McCarthy for some ideas.

Bob · Post by **Bob** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 9:46 pm

Boo hoo.

The org has had pirate bagphones on the playa for a decade, and internets for most of that.

Go munch on some wilted alfalfa sprouts, hippies.

rodiponer · Post by **rodiponer** » Sun Aug 23, 2009 11:21 pm

Bob wrote:pirate bagphones on the playa for a decade

I want a pirate bagphone! What is it?

When I was sailing far, I'd sometimes be at sea and work and endure and do so much just to get to some new, exotic place, and I was sometimes annoyed with the 'tourists' who had just teleported in on a 747 and were visiting these places as some kind of... stamp collecting. To say "Why YES, I have been to xxx", when, in fact, their experience of the place was nothing like mine, because they landed with their minds neatly wrapped up by their landlubbery life at home, and they stayed firmly within the little bubble of civilization that is same and nearly everywhere these days. To talk to them of their trips was always the same boring story of flights, hotels, meals, and taxi's.

So it would be compelling if )*( was some kind of wayward rural retreat, a place where only the hard core and committed go, that in the journey or just being there a strong shared mindspace and experience flows... Well, that would be awesome. But that almost never happens anywhere. Even in the more exotic places there are the people firmly caught up in their own bullshit, the douchebag guy who's only into his equipment or ego, or whatever. Hell, I'm even past being a respectful visitor and equally hate that Third World Guy Who Has It All Figured Out. There's six billion frigging people on the planet, and one only has to listen to AM radio to see how strange the minds of our neighbors can be.

I've never been to )*(, but I have a feeling it was always a fantasy that everyone there was on the same page. I know Bay Area people tend to extend their feelings of personal space onto the world around them, which makes it all the more thoughtful that "Radical Inclusiveness" is a fundamental part of idea.

I feel that cellphones would be positive, as a ready marker. Those who wear them, or don't, you can see the choices they've made, how they are choosing to live, and if you want to know them.

That seems a lot more telling than if they are wearing the clown uniforms you guys keep talking about. :)

velocirafter · Post by **velocirafter** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 6:12 am

I'm just glad that I was able to experience BM while there was no or at least not large scale cell usage. It is probably unavoidable that it will become bigger and bigger and I think that it will be to the detriment of the festival.

...we could all get together and start running denial-of-service attacks on the telecoms infrastructure

velocirafter · Post by **velocirafter** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 6:19 am

Just been thinking a little more...surely there is overwhelming support against the use of mobile phones on the playa, if it is not worth the telcos investment then you can be sure they wont do it. If people dont use the lines that they have put in this year then it wont be expanded on for next year.

I assume AT&T do this off there own bat and is not something set up by the organisers of BM

Extreme Solution: steal everyones SIM cards!!

C.f.M. · Post by **C.f.M.** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 7:43 am

I think it'd be more fun to have them, and keep them on the DL, and then when somebody needs one magically have it.

unjonharley · Post by **unjonharley** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 7:54 am

taking your cell to burning man is no different than drugs..

It's hard for me to understand why a person would spent so much time and money..Then miss the whole thing behind there addiction..

You can stay home and get stoned and make useless phone called..

I have often wounder how important some one think they are do one thing and talking on the phone too

My kids worry about me.. So they gave me a phone.. when I'm away from home ie BM.. I turn it on once a day just to please the kids..

I don't ansewer it if i'm doing some thing else.. Leave a message..

Driving no ansewer/leave a message

Having fun no ansewer message..

If your dead, I'll see ya on the other side..

If your hurt, I'm 5oo miles away..

What the house burned down?.. Put a tent in the back yard.

Your dieing..I should kill myself speeding to get to you.. You already know how much I love you..

Post by **Elderberry** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 9:02 am

This is an interesting thread...so many strong opinions, sort of like gun control.

I think I tend to agree with Bob on this issue.

But the bottom line, for me, is the same as with most things that annoy me in life...it's usually not the thing, but the person using it.

Technology has advance and evolved while manners, being polite and respecting others seems to have been forgotten.

I like the idea of being able to make a call, if necessary; I wouldn't like to see cell phones all over the playa.

JK

C.f.M. · Post by **C.f.M.** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 9:10 am

jkisha wrote:it's usually not the thing, but the person using it.

Yeah, like the Grateful Dead, and techno.

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Mon Aug 24, 2009 10:56 pm

yup, 5 bars, AT&T

I just got back from there, and, got 5 bars at the esplanade.

...........jkisha wrote:
...........it's usually not the thing, but the person using it.

you know, JK, that's profound.....and so applicable in so many situations.......

again,
I'm in awe of your eloquent, succinct, and accurate observations.......