I’m sitting in the lobby of a Super 8 in Hardin, Montana. Go ahead, look it up…it’s out there a ways. I’m sitting and I’m writing and I’m finding myself upset that the wireless internet connection here keeps disconnecting me so that I can’t finish watching my Netflix-streamed episode of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. I’m really actually quite upset – all week I’ve been fighting this damn connection to, well, stay connected.
But think about the situation for a second – what I’m actually attempting to do:
- Sit in a hotel lobby, with my laptop computer.
- This laptop computer will be connected, wirelessly, to a super-network of computers across the globe.
- This wireless data connection will be high-speed. In fact, when operating properly, it will be capable of transmitting up to 159 Megabytes per second directly to my laptop.
- This wireless data connection will be available for free.
- Once connected, I will go to a website that allows me to watch any of Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations episodes immediately by streaming them, in high-definition, to my laptop for playback on a media player that was included with my laptop.
- In fact, if I find Mr. Bourdain a bit fake and annoying, I can watch nearly ANY episode of ANY show that I have EVER wanted (or not wanted) to see, along with any number of classic and not-so-classic movies at ANY time.
- For less than $10/mon.
- It actually works 95% of the time.
I submit to you that not much more than 10 years ago all of the above-mentioned items would have been absolutely impossible to achieve. 15 years ago, I would submit that all of the above-mentioned items, except for the first, would have been impossible to even imagine.
And yet, 15 years later, I am truly, seriously pissed that I can’t immediately stream, without interruption, the show of my choosing in the middle of nowhere for free.
Think about that for a second and what that actually means…will we ever be truly satisfied with what technology can deliver to us? We have made such monumental, gigantic leaps and bounds with network technology in the past decade, but I don’t really appreciate any of that but in two instances:
- - The first time that it works flawlessly
- - The time that you really want it to work badly and it just won’t
Obviously, I’m experiencing the latter instance right now, but the point remains: if the Super 8’s wireless coverage hadn’t have been so spotty, would I have appreciated how cool what I was trying to do actually was? Would I have written anything about what I was able to do? Of course not – as soon as any new technology works reliably two or three times in a row, we take it to be the new standard and check off that little scientific advancement in our mind. High-definition video and surround audio, delivered anywhere in the world, wirelessly, for free? Check! As long as I can watch ‘The Hangover’ with my girlfriend without the Netflix player buffering more than once, we can consider ourselves firmly in the grasp of the FUTURE!
So where am I going with all of this – no idea. I guess I’m telling myself to occasionally look back and remember how shitty it was to have to wait until my sister was off the phone to dial into the local BBS service to play ASCII role-playing games with two of my friends from down the street and one weird old man. It seems as ancient as vacuum tubes in TV’s – except for the fact that I had a dial-up modem until I went to college in 2000.
I’m just sayin’ – technology won’t always be moving this fast. It took them like 30 years from the invention of the radio to the invention of the TV – and another 30 years after that for color. Enjoy what we have while we have it.
1 comments:
No Kidding, I do remember the dial-up's, at the time it was the big thing. There are area's here that is all you can still get. We went off to college and there was thing called ethernet where we logged onto the school's network and boom we were on 24-7. Times are changing. I totally agree, be greatful for what you do have and take care of yourself.
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