Homeless hotspots: ignorant or ingenious?
One of the UK's largest advertising agencies has pushed forward ideas to turn homeless people in to wifi hotspots. Sound crazy? Unfair? Degrading?
Well Bartle Bogle and Hegarty (BBH) don't seem to think so. Their "charitable experiment" is planned to act in the same way as the Big Issue does currently. Instead of offering a service through the magazine they are providing a digital service that is arguably far more needed by the general public today. BBH see it as a way of modernising the Street Newspaper.
It is unsurprising to hear that the creative community responded with mixed feelings (to be polite).
A writer for website ReadWriteWeb commented:
“There's a wee little difference, though. Those newspapers are written by homeless people, and they cover issues that affect the homeless population.
“By contrast, Homeless Hotspots are helpless pieces of privilege-extending human infrastructure. It's like it never occurred to the people behind this campaign that people might read street newspapers. They probably just buy them to be nice and throw them in the garbage.”
“By contrast, Homeless Hotspots are helpless pieces of privilege-extending human infrastructure. It's like it never occurred to the people behind this campaign that people might read street newspapers. They probably just buy them to be nice and throw them in the garbage.”
And this is the big difference between the two schemes. The wifi hotspots, despite providing homeless people with a service they can sell, does not give anything back in terms of addressing the issue of homelessness.
It is a serious issue in the capital, only this morning during my commute and homeless woman made her way through the carriage asking for change...and to no surprise of mine (as I did exactly the same) everyone ignored her. And in the same vain we treat the issue itself in the same way.
This is not the point where I ask you to start paying money to an unknown charity scheme but (without sounding too cheesy) I hope that I am able to become less ignorant..and hope you can too.
Enough of the deep stuff...
What do you think about all this?
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