[spectre] // Newstweek update: HOWTO //

[Julian Oliver]

SUMMARY:

Newstweek is a device for manipulating news read by other people on wireless
hotspots. Built into a small and innocuous wall plug it appears part of the
local infrastructure, allowing writers to remotely edit news read on wireless
devices without the awareness of their users.

HOWTO:

We are very proud to announce our new and comprehensive HOWTO, allowing others
to now make Newstweek devices for under EUR50.00. 

	http://newstweek.com/howto

REMOTE NEWS ALTERATION:

By using our new registration-free online service, a Newstweek device plugged
into a wall at a cafe, library, school or elsewhere can now be controlled
remotely using a simple browser interface. Any number of devices can be
controlled in this manner.

OVERVIEW:

"Media is the nervous system of a democracy; if it's not functioning well, the
democracy can't function."

	- Jeff Cohen, Founding Director of the Park Center for Independent Media

While news is increasingly read digitally, it still follows a top-down
distribution model and thus often falls victim to the same political and
corporate interests that have always sought to manipulate public opinion.

Newstweek intervenes upon this model, providing opportunity for citizens to have
their turn to manipulate the press; generating propaganda or simply 'fixing
facts' as they pass across a wireless network. As such, Newstweek can be seen as
a tactical device for altering reality on a per-network basis.

Newstweek also signals a word of caution, that a strictly media-defined reality
is a vulnerable reality; that along the course of news distribution there are
many hands at work, from ISP workers, numerous server administrators and
wireless access point owners. 

Moreso, with the increasing ubiquity of networks and their devices comes greater
ignorance as to their function, offering a growing opportunity for manipulation
of opinion, from source to destination. 

Hotspots manipulable by Newstweek include cafes, libraries, hotels universities
and city-wide wireless access points.

	http://newstweek.com/overview
	http://vimeo.com/23075736

As our last project video was deleted from video (for reasons we don't know) we
provide a backup version here:

	http://newstweek.com/video/newstweek.mp4

RECENT PRESS:

Newstweek [...] is one of the most elegantly conceived and executed network art
projects in the past few years, if not in the brief history of computational
art."

- Vague Terrain

	http://vagueterrain.net/content/2011/01/newstweek-network-permeability-and-headline-hacking
	http://www.imperica.com/features/newstweek
	http://blogs.computerworld.com/17820/hackers_use_hidden_device_to_manipulate_news_at_wi_fi_hotspots
	http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/22/newstweek-hacks-free-public-wifi_n_826510.html

Regards,

Julian Oliver and Danja Vasiliev.

http://newstweek.com