A car pulls into the dusty car park and Tim and Ron quickly cross the playground laden with toolboxes, an antenna and coils of wire. After quick greetings they launch into a dramatic story of theft. The night before, a major antenna in the community network was stolen from the top of a factory in the southeast of the city. At a cost of $5000 it is a significant loss for the group and it is not the first time it has happened. Equipment has been stolen from four different sites with three thefts this year. The first, in June the year before, was on the roof of a large supermarket. Someone cut through the base of the four-metre steel mast to remove two dishes. Then, in February, a wireless box went missing from the roof of a house. The owners were away when it was taken and it was only when Dan, another member of the group, failed to connect to the network and went to check the site that it was reported stolen. Last night’s theft is the second this month. A week prior, someone cut the cables and removed the mast from the backyard of a member’s home. Overall, the group lost 4 of the 23 major antennas making up the core infrastructure that spans the suburban city.

Tim and Ron are clearly concerned about the recent loss and increasingly worried about the emerging pattern. They think it is possible that thieves are using the many maps, photos and diagrams available on the group’s website to locate sites and plan attacks. The website is open to the public, to recruit new members and share knowledge. Without this information people would not know where the network was located or how it was put together. With it, there is a chance, and increasing reality, that others might be using it to steal equipment.

Tim is tired. He spent the night on the factory roof attempting to install night vision cameras, but it became too dark, windy and dangerous to continue. When this did not work he developed a unique monitoring system, involving his mobile phone, two computers and quick programming, which would send him a mobile text message should the connection break again. Once alerted, he could race to the site. Tim acknowledged it was a temporary solution. Although it worked, there were several issues including the fact he received a text message every time a bird sat on the antenna.

I was struck by the complexity of WiFi. Like many I used WiFi to access the internet at home, at work and in places in between such as cafes and libraries. I was used to thinking of it as a channel through which I could study, socialise and shop online without wires. Prior to learning about community WiFi networks I had not given much thought to WiFi as something that could be made or for that matter, stolen. Nor had I considered the possibility of different versions or the implications this had for understanding the internet, local technological cultures or practices of innovation. I began to ask: How can you make WiFi? Do different makers matter? What would alternate versions of WiFi look like?

WiFi may be an electromagnetic radio signal invisible to the human eye but in this account it is present on rooftops, backyards and school playgrounds, on weekends and evenings, in photographs, maps, websites and dramatic stories. It involves birdlife, thieves, improvised methods and a constellation of bought, found and re-purposed materials such as sticky tape, mobile phones and cameras. At a time when broadband and WiFi have become synonymous with the internet, this kind of wireless work unsettles familiar understandings of the point and purpose of conventional pay-for-service connectivity. From a sociological perspective what is remarkable is the sheer array of stuff, people and places involved in making (and re-making) WiFi. Here, information is socialised, materialised and visualised. WiFi is a thing that can be studied. As one member described it: ‘We are building Ournet, not the internet’. Put another way, rather than simply adding content to the internet, Air-Stream members are making the very architecture of the internet their own, and in the process re-imagining ways to connect to one another.

Despite running successfully for more than a decade, surprisingly little is known of how or why these networks are made. Drawing on original research using ethnographic methods this book presents an overdue account of community wireless broadband culture. The chapters that follow describe how individual makers, or what I also term ‘backyard technologists’, collectively make their own WiFi network using a diverse range of at-hand materials and improvised methods in everyday places. Just as early Science and Technology Studies (STS) researchers brought science ‘down to earth’ (Law and Mol 2001:2), the book illustrates how a highly sophisticated technology, traditionally shaped and controlled by large scale ICT organisations, is made for not-for-profit purpose from the ground up, or in this case, from the backyard out.

The research builds on the idea established in STS and cultural studies that ICTs are not ubiquitous or universal (Miller and Slater 2000; Goggin 2004, 2007; Ito et al. 2005; Goggin and Gregg 2007; Burrell 2009). They do not all follow the same development or adoption trajectories but are constantly being made (and remade) in relation to their material, social and cultural contexts. WiFi presents an intriguing subject due to the ‘always on’, ‘anywhere’ and ‘everywhere’ rhetoric that has surrounded it for the last decade. It is often overlooked (and under-explored) because it is largely considered an invisible and ‘boring’ infrastructure that simply provides wireless access to the internet. Yet these makers, in building networks from scratch, challenge conventions of what technological artefacts are meant to do and look like. A central tenet of the book is that different versions of WiFi become visible if attention is paid to distinct technology cultures, and in particular those of backyard technologists. Paying attention to local history and its distinctive relationship to technology use/misuse and understanding provides a rich description of a local version of WiFi – an Australian WiFi – and in the process signals the possibility of comparative studies. Ultimately, in drawing attention to different ways of thinking about WiFi development and use in other places, it contributes to a deeper understanding of global wireless digital cultures.

The relevance of a small vivid example like Air-Stream lies in how it renders visible largely invisible digital technologies, pointing out other shapes and possibilities of use and asking new questions about things we take for granted. They make us wonder how they ‘might have been otherwise’ (Bijker and Law 1992:3). WiFi makers shift the register – not by asking what we can do on the internet, but what we can do with it. Their practice signals ways of connecting with each other that circumvents familiar telecommunication relationships. Stepping outside conventional dependencies transforms our view of the technological landscape. It changes the questions: What else can WiFi do besides pipe the internet? Why is the internet packaged in the way it is? Why should we be content with fast downloads and slow uploads? What does this inhibit? How might things be different? Critically, the study also addresses how this technology is made. WiFi makers imbue a Do-it-Yourself (DiY) ethic, yet they do not do it alone – they Do-it-Together (DiT). This timely critique of collective DiT innovation in an increasingly networked society will be of interest to STS scholars and practitioners of maker culture.

A short note about what this book is not about. It does not seek to be representative of all community wireless technology networks. In fact it does not even claim to represent Air-Stream now. Rather, the book captures and tells a particular story of a particular point in time: 2006–2009. Further to arguing that WiFi is local and cultural, it is also temporal. The book is, and will always be, set against a backdrop of constant technological change and debate about the role and importance of wireless broadband provision and use around the world. Since my fieldwork, the Labour Government started to roll out the Australian National Broadband Network (NBN) with the aim of connecting every citizen to high speed internet. In 2013, the federal election resulted in a new Liberal Government with its own vision of broadband in this country, which again looks to significantly transform how citizens get connected. Irrespective of the scale and nature of new technological infrastructure, these kinds of advancements are all part of and respond to the same set of challenges and critiques. The significance and innovation of the case study in this book lies in the way it interweaves technological imaginaries with local everyday use in order to generate other kinds of futures. It presents a complementary, yet strikingly different narrative to top down technology innovation processes that produce services for consumers. In this way it is a timely, and timeless, reminder of the importance and value of both stories, especially those often rendered invisible, and the evolving relationships between them.

The next two chapters theoretically and methodologically frame the study. In Chapter 2, I develop a framework for exploring WiFi in relation to social, cultural and material ecologies, to argue that marginal and mundane technology stories matter. I outline three main themes: the nature of connectivity, the visual culture of a digital technology and DiY/ DiT practice. Chapter 3 begins by introducing the group, location and key characters. I discuss the research design and highlight some of the epistemological, methodological and practical issues that shaped fieldwork. The chapters that follow draw on ethnographic material to tell stories about community WiFi makers. Chapter 4 is located at a monthly WiFi meeting where I examine the multi-dimensional, contrasting and sometimes contradictory nature of connectivity and propose that the group’s seemingly scattergun visual culture is designed to fit the idiosyncrasies of the network. I also introduce and explain the role of the barbeque or ‘barbie’ in the making of WiFi, arguing that this too is enrolled by the group as a means of contending with the complexities of the technology. In Chapter 5, I discuss how WiFi makers deal with uncertainty. Because the network is located across the city, rather than in isolated hotspots, makers encounter a vast array of interruptions on a daily basis in the form of trees, birds, bugs, technical complications, materials and the weather. Rather than attempting to tidy up or erase interruptions, I describe how they build them into the network. Chapter 6 is situated in a suburban yard and rooftop. Describing the process of ‘stumbling’ for wireless noise reveals how makers represent the digital landscape, use materials at hand and weave a technological imaginary into a network that is never fully stabilized or known. Chapter 7 examines the role of ‘mods’ (modifications) in digital tinkering practices during the raising of an antenna on a backyard shed. Here, makers render visible mistakes and tangents, thereby reworking conventional spectrums of success and failure. In Chapter 8, I draw on encounters between local internet service providers (ISPs) and WiFi makers to discuss ‘homebrew high-tech’, a distinctive cultural way of imagining and making a version of wireless broadband that marries precision and tinkering with a collaborative social approach and intimate material knowledge in mundane locations. To conclude, Chapter 9 draws these findings together via the three themes to reflect on (and project futures of) collective DiT technology making cultures.

From 2010, the rollout of the federally funded NBN was designed to continue this trajectory with the aim of delivering all Australians into a new world of communication. Expected to grow the economy, enhance education and business and expand the quality and quantity of jobs, it was, according to the Labour government that conceived it, nothing short of a ‘historic act of nation building’ (Rudd 2009). Broadband was again a major platform in the 2013 federal election with fierce debates about how high-speed was high-speed broadband for Australian citizens (Wardell 2013). Whereas once Australia was largely dependent on the wool industry, with an economy that ‘rode on the sheeps’ back’ (White 1981:149), connectivity via the internet is central to its political and economic present and future.