Dowse is a transparent proxy facilitating the awareness of ingoing and outgoing connections, from, to, and within a local area network.

Running a network in the age of the Internet of Things means hosting the connectivity of multiple devices owned by a diversity of subjects. Often such devices have full access to private, common and public information about humans operating them. Furthermore, devices can talk to each other without humans being consulted, and such interactions are not even manifest. This situation raises issues that are not just technical, but socio-political, about the way connections happen without human consent, within local networks and towards the outside, to and from the Internet.

The risks of unconscious abuse and exploitation of information asymmetry are growing tremendously. As things initiate on the behalf of users, we are making a major leap towards a world that provides us with contexts that we may not want at all.