I’m typing this post in bed at home on my laptop. Not that big hulking 10-pound thing I bought three years ago, but a slim, stripped-down “netbook” that lasts three times as long and weighs less than half as much. I’m accessing the Internet without the use of any wires – instead, a router connected to my Time-Warner-provided modem is turning the electrical internet signals transmitted by copper wire into radio waves that can travel through the doors and walls of my house.
Just now, I watched a video of Chuck Todd, a decent talking head at MSNBC (a cable channel – but I don’t have cable!) interview Ari Melber, a smart and interesting journalist from the liberal weekly The Nation. On the Internet. Transmitted through radio waves, to my computer, which is tiny, but running an operating system platform built by tens of thousands of volunteer and paid developers but given to me absolutely free.
The video? Free. No lag. Crisp, no stuttering. At the end of the video clip, the embedded player provided me options to watch others. Yes, some of it was the political equivalent of junk food – gossip, rumors, and covering political events with no significance next month. Still, I could watch Elizabeth Warren talk about her role as overseer of the TARP bailout and what she found, or Bill Clinton talking about the economic history of Haiti.
Wow. The future has arrived, ladies and gentlemen, and let’s not turn up our nose at its wonders.
Dude. Imagine invisible internet, floating around in the air, being sucked down by our laptops. Shoddy physics explanations aside, we’ve made that happen! Hooray for humanity.
(Of course, some of the rare minerals needed to make this happen come from slave labor in the Congo; instead of blogging, I should be working day and night to make extra cash to send to Haiti (1 in 220 people there died a few days ago. Still! Let’s focus on the happy right now)