20050105   

Michael considered fate at 18:34   |   Permalink   |   Post a Comment

Here I sit in my 5,000 sq foot loft, far from my room and my comfortable cat5 ethernet connections, gone wireless. Here I am in the corner of a dark and lonely space filled only with ghosts of parties past and lots of darkness to keep them company. Here I sit appreciating some of the simplest yet most influential technologies of the early 2000's - mark my words. Wiresless has been a long time coming and now, almost, practically, theoretically, mostly, it's here. It's come a long long way since the early days of RF, ham radios, and UHF. It's come a long way from 80's cell phones the size of small breadboxes and it's even come a long way from your super-duper 900mghz phone from 1995.

Yet somehow, it's all the same. "New" technology is sometimes a misnomer but we'll let it slide. They're just so excited about things, you know? Jumpy even.

A.I. !! They exclaimed in the 80's. Jetson-like maid robots were promised.

Nano-Tech !! They exclaimed in the 90's. Tiny machines to flow through our blood streams like so many tiny maintenance men.

Now it's trips to the moon, space stations on mars, and superstring theory. Super!

What's next? I gotta ask, What's next?

Old technology made new or new technology made feasible, I don't really care, I'm really digging the wireless thing. It's everyone, it's freedom from tethers, it's wonderful - and it's not even that commitement scares me so much. It's a mental awareness of your surroundings where the computer - the laptop - is part of *you* and not part of a network or attached to a big brick of a desk or a rats-tail of a ethernet cord. It's envigoratingly refreshening like a breath off fresh air after painting all afternoon. It's fresh rain after a muggy midday.

What it means for the rest of you, I'm not sure, but for me it means 4900+ sq feet more space in which I can let my creative juices flow. It means the ability to sit outside on my stoop, in the middle of Montreal, and write about all the crazies walking by - in real time - to you good folk of the innernector. It means freedom from the tiny walls of my room and the tiny walls of my mind, built up from years of attachments, tethers, leashes, chains, and fences.

Or it just means I can write emails on the shitter now. I dunno. Whatever.