Behind the scenes of Radical Networks, Brooklyn’s most radical networking conference

In two weeks, the Brooklyn tech scene is going to get a bit more radical. That’s because it will be home to the Radical Networks conference, a three-day event of talks, art and ideas.

“It’s basically like a giant, DIY alternative networking and arts festival,” organizer Sarah Grant said in an interview. “We want to introduce the general public to networking technology to help empower them.”
The conference will focus on methods by which normal people can set up their own web servers and networks and highlight some of the problems of using today’s mega internet service providers, such as mass surveillance and their access to your data. Talks include “Outernet & Beachball Antennas: Individuals Using Space Networks” and “You’ve Been Enrolled: Charting The Topography of Biometric Surveillance Networks.”
“We don’t really know, and not to sound super scary, but these ISPs are corporations. They have their own agendas and we don’t know what they’re doing with our data,” Grant explained. “The data could be vulnerable to being handed over to the government or authorities. The fact is that our data is not in our own hands on our own hardware, but somewhere else’s. At the very least it’s a matter of principle.”
Grant’s background is in art and design. She spent most of her career in advertising.
“I was a part of turning the web from a place that was free and open, where there wasn’t tracking or surveillance going on, [to what it is now],” she explained.
Eventually she left Madison Avenue and moved back into the art world. In 2012 she won a residency at Eyebeam, the avant tech art space currently located in Industry City. At Eyebeam she met other people working in the brackish estuaries between art and technology, many of whom shared interests with her about do it yourself servers and networking. She traveled to Europe, where, she said, there was a much more defined and cooperative culture for talking about alternative networking. There were groups and meetups and she wanted to bring some of that back to the states.
“I started developing an interest in understanding networking technologies so I could make my own networks as a way to atone almost for those 15 years [in advertising],” Grant said. “When I saw how easy it was to set up my own server, I started to teach workshops and talk about it and ultimately to set up this conference.”

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And also check out this list of U.S. mesh networks, including Brooklyn’s very own NYC Mesh.