Burning Man's Playa Phone Lets You Call a Random Stranger on the Playa
A pay phone booth has appeared at Burning Man, on the corner of 3:30 and Chomolungma in Black Rock City. Anyone can use it to call almost anywhere in the world for free for 5 minutes, or you can call the number and a random Burner might pick up. The phone works over the Internet, and its status page shows live call stats. It's a fun, quirky way to connect with strangers at the festival.
If someone knows the number of a friend or loved one, they can call almost anywhere in the world for 5 minutes for free.
- aaron42net
This phone is my project. I'm happy to answer questions.
- solfox
Our first time out on the playa together, my girlfriend and I stopped by this phone booth and made a couple of calls. And because we stopped, we saw the FSM camp next door, and a giant sign saying "Weddings Here", so we inquired. They offered us free rings and then announced our wedding over a loudspeaker. In 2 minutes we had an entire wedding party, complete with best man, an elder to give away the bride, 25+ guests, and an officiant. My newly-minted best man even gave me one of my favorite playa gifts ever as a wedding gift. We opted not to "make it official", though they offered. It was a truly incredible experience. Thanks FSM!
- cjflog
This is a great project! I've been to Burning Man 10x and interactive projects are my favorite part.
Also, if I may, for folks that might appreciate more phone-based spontaneity, I've built an app to revive the social phone call. It works like a bat signal. Light your beacon and it reaches all your friends at once. The first friend to answer connects 1-1 and every other signal quietly drops. Check it out at trybeacon.chat
- throwayay4929
Is Burning Man fun? I got the rather cynical impression that it's mostly very well off tech people and even better off finance/political people.
Not trying to be flippant, genuinely curious if my impression is based on reality or am I making things up.
- dole
Burning man livestream here, still early and setting up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BgytKvsORM
Page says it's on "Chomolungma" but it's "Ceiba" on the maps, just in case you can spot the phone on the stream.
- hackingonempty
Brad Templeton did this 20 years ago, https://www.templetons.com/pq/build.html
- NelsonMinar
There's a bunch of neat public payphone art projects out there. A friend of mine runs Futel, which has some fairly elaborate voice menus and several phones installed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futel
- kripy
In Australia, Telstra is required to keep the payphone network up and running. You can make free outgoing calls to landlines and mobile phones. And I just read that you can call inbound as well (which I did not know). Now the fun begins.