The proliferation of social networking and current developments in service-based platforms (what has become known as 'cloud computing') provide explicit examples of the privatization and commodification of social production. What becomes clear is that our experience of the web is bound to inherent paradoxes that are reflected in its technical organization. One of the foundations for its critique relies on the recognition of the ways in which the energies of peer production and social exchange have been expropriated from the commons by the market.

unCloud is an application that enables anyone with a laptop to create an open wireless network and distribute their own information. Once it is launched, a passerby using a mobile internet device can connect to this open wireless network. The person running the application can decide what information is shown in any web address. Users can access information wirelessly while at the same time remain disconnected from the internet. unCloud does not depend on a remote datacenter, instead it can be run from a laptop, making it an ideal application to run in a train or at a café.

Project by: Rui Guerra and David Jonas. Thanks to: Geoff Cox, Pieter-Paul Mortier, Maarten te Paske, Varun Vachhar, Mark Shepard and all beta testers.

unCloud 1.0 was released during Artefact Festival, Leuven, Belgium, 14th February 2012. The source code is available at github.

Co-commision by: STUK and Arnolfini

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