In five minutes and four slides, I gave an overview of what motivates my research, and my 'overhead view' of networking in general.

The key point of the talk was that I split networking into three tiers: global community, abstract local community, and physical local community.

Global community is, in short, the Internet. Those of us with access to a computer that is connected to the Internet are able to quickly communicate with people around the globe, to share ideas, and to express ourselves. This is creating new types of community in which sideline ideas become mainstream, cultures are hybridized, and community is abstracted from human interaction. While this is creating new modes of thought, and creating more opportunities for exposure, it also removes us from many of our human characteristics, like non-verbal communications, the nuances of face-to-face interaction, and issues relating to quotidian life.

Abstract local community is the Internet with a regional emphasis. In this case, we still use the Internet as a substrate, and so there the medium does not inherently force any sort of community building, it is solely the efforts of the participants that creates this community. Metropolitan-area chat-rooms and forums, local government web pages: these are examples of this tier of networking. This tier encourages real-life gatherings and human interaction, and often directly relates to physical quotidian life. However, the Internet substrate often allows outsiders to infiltrate. This adds an element of of corruption, but also an element of stimulation.

Physical local community eschews the global Internet substrate, and focuses solely on device-to-device communications capabilities. This mode of communication is, at present, not widely used. However, by taking advantage of the locality of peer-to-peer or "ad-hoc" device connectivity, we can enable new applications that allow mobile device users to enhance the community around them in new ways. However, using only local device connectivity excludes the global resources that are available, and so in itself, is a restrictive technology.

The Bluespotting project in the RUBINet group at UC Davis is currently developing a hybrid system that will exploit local connectivity opporutnities via Bluetooth or WiFi device-to-device connections, but still maintain loose connectivity to the global resources offered by the Internet, via opportunistic synchornizations, and user-driven data caching. The initial target will be the Unitrans public transit bus system.