Today's technology advances so rapidly that people are often unable to update their media schemas in time and as a result are left cluelessly in awe of it all. Mike Thompson's Wifi dowsing rod aims to work against this: By basing the design for a wireless internet detector on ancient technology, the user should immediately feel at home with the device.


Although perhaps impractical and anecdotal, the Wifi dowsing rod is an intriguing attempt of using 'magic' as a construct to cope with the technological complexity accumulating around us. A great gift for your grand-grand-parents.


Related: Magical interaction, Your grand-grand-grand-parents new media, Dandella shows you the way, Voodoo communication device.

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  • The wifi rod makes a reappearance as a museum object at the Museum of Modern Art's Talk to Me exhibition (http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/07/talk-to-me/?pid=4018). Now, if we consider Coomaraswamy's observation that "we are proud of our museums where we display a way of living that we have made impossible", what did happen to make the wifi rod obsolete before it even did find real use? Since the aether has been flooded by wifi waves, I suppose what is needed now for our grand-parents is a magic lock pick set for cracking wifi key locks.

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