“As for the convenience thing—well, that’s a matter of opinion. Sure, the city or the internet knowing what we’re doing, or predicting what we want, might make our everyday life seem easier, but at what cost? How much control are we actually giving up? How much are our lives and habits being shaped by these conveniences, by letting these networks and the algorithms that control them make decisions for us? Are they really convenient for us, or for the networks? Again it’s an issue of transparency—we can’t really see what is going on, so how can we know the decisions are being made for our benefit? How can we argue with them, question them? We’re constantly told that the internet is freeing and democratising, but all these decisions are being made from the top down—from big companies, big data, and big government. That’s what the Croft is about—showing that there’s an alternative.”
And that’s the other part of what the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft is about—it doesn’t just kill your access to the internet and other networks, it also provides you with an alternative. When I first crossed into the Croft’s supposedly designated area (more on this later), not only did all my internet, wifi, and cellular data die—but I also received a message asking me to install a special app. With some slight unease I agreed, and my spex went into what Manaan calls “big data hibernation mode”—all its other apps, as well as a large chunk of its OS, are frozen. “It’s necessary to do this because it’s not just apps and websites that constantly collect data, but your spex’s OS itself is constantly monitoring everything and reporting back when it can,” he explains. “Even cutting it off from the net isn’t enough to stop it—we had to find a way to stop it watching altogether, otherwise as soon as you leave here and reconnect it just reports back everything you did while you were here.”
With my spex under the control of Manaan’s app—called Flex—I was instantly connected to another network. The Flex network appears like normal wifi access at first, but it’s radically different: for a start it has no connections to the internet at all. “This is a MESH network, it’s completely decentralised. Instead of connecting to a router or a central server to access it, you connect directly to other Flex users over Bluetooth, and through them to everybody else on the network. It’s very localised—in order to connect you have to be within fifty or so meters of someone else that’s connected. But if you are then you can potentially reach everyone else in the network. So even though it’s hyperlocal there’s no limit to how many people can join, or how big the network can grow—this is networking on a community scale.”
For Manaan this kind of networking is a viable alternative to the corporate-dominated, top-down network model of the internet. As such it provides a lot of familiar services and applications—messaging, a Twitter-style social networking timeline, forums, wikis, voice, video and avatar-based calls, and file sharing. Again this is all decentralised. “There are no servers here, no data centres or cloud storage. The file-sharing system is pretty sophisticated but very easy to use—you can share pretty much anything, from web pages to streaming video and full VR environments, but it has to be stored locally on your spex or another device running Flex. We just set this up and let users do what they want with it. We’ve spontaneously ended up with dozens of photo-sharing groups, radio stations, and mixed-reality gaming campaigns. And it’s all come from within the community.”
Despite Manaan’s claims of transparency, he’s surprisingly cagey about how the technology that keeps the Croft running actually works. “I can’t talk about it too much right now, because we’ve got security concerns of our own, but we have a set geographical boundary in the neighbourhood, and within that we use certain frequency-jamming technologies to block all conventional wifi and cellular signals. The Flex network actually runs across direct Bluetooth 4.0 connections between spex, so we don’t jam that frequency, obviously.”
Beyond this, Manaan doesn’t want to reveal much more about the nuts and bolts of how the Croft’s “digital boundary” works, not just because of his security fears, but also because of possible legal ramifications. “At first glance it probably uses the same jamming technologies employed by law enforcement agencies in the Middle East and some parts of the US,” Dr Erin Pletz of Bristol University tells me. “These are usually mounted on jeeps or riot vans, and are activated at scenes of civil unrest in order to stop protesters communicating with each other over social media, etc. While it’s thought the British police has trialled these systems, I don’t think any forces have them on active deployment. The legal status around using them is extremely fuzzy—there are no fixed laws as yet about how and when they can be used, or who can use them—especially private individuals.
“What interests me more is how the People’s Republic of Stokes Croft got hold of the technology in the first place,” Pletz continues. “Buying it would be hard and expensive, and probably more illegal than using it, as I believe it’s classified as a weapons system at present. It’s not unfeasible, though, that they may have built it themselves. It’s certainly possible to do so, with a mix of off-the-shelf and 3D-printed components. The know-how is available online if you know where to look.”
Certainly a do-it-yourself attitude seems prevalent amongst the community in the Croft. “It’s really the essence of what we’re trying to do here,” Manaan tells me as he shows me around the neighbourhood, pointing out the several boutique 3D print and bespoke component shops. “We’re all about finding alternatives to top-down approaches to technology, so it’s unsurprising that we’ve attracted people that want to start businesses and workshops along these lines. People also come here because they know they’re not being watched—people who perhaps want to tinker with existing technologies without large companies or lawyers breathing down their necks. They value the freedom we offer.”
Another group that clearly values the freedom here are artists. Built on the reputation of the likes of Banksy and 3Cube, Bristol has long been considered Europe’s graffiti and street art mecca, and long before Manaan and his crew arrived, Stokes Croft was one of its hot spots. There is barely a patch of wall down the whole street that isn’t daubed in paint, with the whole fronts of some buildings transformed into massive murals. This is nothing new, Stokes Croft has looked like this for decades—but put on a pair of spex running Flex and the art comes alive in ways that seem to warp reality. Buildings strobe with colour while tentacles of paint slither out of the architecture to splatter unsuspecting passersby, herds of rainbow-coloured zebras run alongside passing traffic, and vast, ancient-looking trees explode through rooftops to dominate the skies. They’re the kind of augmented graffiti hacks you might have seen in cities all across the globe, but on an unprecedented scale. “What we do is basically impose zero limits on what artists can create and post,” explains the Dutch artist Anika Bernhardt, the Croft’s “uncurator.” “As long as they stick by a handful of community-agreed guidelines, artists can put art—both digital and paint—basically wherever they like. They’re free to post over or alter other people’s work, even; in fact, we actively encourage it. It’s very much a free-for-all. My job here is less being curator and more a logger or archivist—instead of deciding what art is shown here, I just make a record of it.”
I’m intrigued by the way she talks about encouraging artists to post over others’ work. Isn’t that hugely frustrating to the original artist? Isn’t it just a form of vandalism? “We don’t like to use that word here,” Bernhardt tells me. “We want to break that association that art is something that needs gatekeepers, that has to be restricted to galleries. Plus, we have ways of recording all the art, so that it’s instantly retrievable.” She demonstrates this to me, using a part of the Flex app that allows us to delve back in time. It’s a dizzying effect—almost as surreal as the street art itself—as she appears to rewind time, the faces of the buildings changing rapidly around me as murals and AR projections shift and change in reverse. “You can stop at any time, pause everything, and really focus on a work that grabs your attention. You can peel back the layers of the graffiti and find what was there before.”