Stumble It!
Why Mom’s Love Wireless and Predictions for the Future
In middle school during one of my sciences classes, I was taught about natural selection. The idea that if an animal or organism has better features than its competition it will survive and thrive while the latter will eventually die off. Well, I’m not a student of biology but I can still see natural selection happening today with technology.
One day my father bought me a printer. He said, “Now you don’t have to keep coming in my office anymore to print my stuff out.” I thought this was great, but a few years later my printer was gone. He walked into my room and told me he got rid of my printer because his was better and now I could just print wirelessly from my room to this office. Plus, ladies dig no wires.
When I was younger I always asked my grandfather about new things coming out during his lifetime and took interest in how shocked he was about newfangled televisions or computing devices, and when I was younger, I’d always wondered what previously unthought-of technological advances I would live through. Now I see a big transition to wireless technology that just happens to make life a little more comfy.
Printing wirelessly is just one of the many things available to today’s consumers. IOGEAR with their 4-Port USB Sharing Hub (Disclaimer – I help with PR for IOGEAR) allows any USB device you have (such as an external hard drive or webcam) to be accessed remotely from anywhere in your home or office. This is a big win for both my father and I because we won’t have to hear my mother nagging about “gross, ugly” wires running through her home. Not only does wireless technology make life easier, it also calms the household environment.
Looking a little deeper into the world of wireless, one thing that can be annoying is plugging my iPod into my receiver and pressing the right buttons to make the sound come out of the right speakers inside/outside my house. Like Edison I generally fail a few times before I get it right, unlike Edison I usually get someone’s help to make it happen. Luckily for me natural selection took over and using Apple’s Airport Express I can just press play on iTunes in my laptop and make the magic happen. That means when I want to change a song I don’t have to run back in the room to scroll through my iPod. I can just take the laptop out to the deck with me and peruse my playlists while never leaving the conversation.
There are also other simple devices that just make out lives easier such as IOGEAR’s wireless keyboard w/optical trackball. Sit back in a comfy chair and type away without worrying about the limitations of a corded keyboard or tripping any stray wanderers you might have lurking through your home. No mouse needed as this keyboard incorporates a trackball. This goes great with a wireless audio/video kit where you can cordlessly view your computer screen on a nice big TV while sitting back on a reclining couch or chair and typing.
I remember when wireless video game controllers came out it was a big deal. Not only could people sit where they wanted to in the room but they didn’t have to worry about being disconnected in the middle of their game. Now, wireless internet is a must. The ability to take your laptop anywhere is super convenient and has made us more efficient. Companies have gotten on board as well offering free Wi-Fi so that their customers can come in and stay awhile. Almost any cell phone that comes out now is hooked up and ready to surf the web wirelessly. Every day more and more items are being connected to wireless networks that never used to be.
Eventually, much of the world will operate this way making the transfer of and access to information immediate and constant. And to spice things up, I’ve added three of my predictions for the future of wireless technology:
1. All traffic lights will be remotely controlled by the local Traffic Control station. They will stream real time data so the control center might make adjustments or monitor certain situations over time and capture trends.
2. People will save things less and less to their hard drives and more and more to the cloud. This way anywhere you have internet access you may retrieve your files. Instead of having to buy physical products for hard drive space people will just be buying the space and not have to deal with an actual storage item.
3. Everyday appliances such as washing machines and refrigerators will hooked up to the wireless network allowing people to start that wash they forgot to before they left for work or turn up the temperature in the fridge because you heard the power might go out soon.
4. To save public money everyone will be home schooled and children will be taught through an advanced interactive system where the professor will be able to view all the children and the children will all be able to view the professor. This could be 3D and the professor would have a live feed to what the student is working on so that he/she might be able to correct them before they do the entire assignment wrong.
