Work Everywhere - Wireless Networking is Here; Do We Want It? Bismarck ND

Posted by : Joe Rudich

Summer is here, and with it, the greatest amount of vacation, recreational travel, and general time away from the office for workaholic Americans. The sound that I recall most vividly from my last camping trip was not the call of the wild, but the call of cellular telephones ringing on the beach. Each ring brought a handful of parents scurrying out of the water to see if their line was ringing.

We used to shake our heads in dismay when we could see the telltale glow of a television inside a camper or a tent during an evening campground walk. Now, PCs are invariably found in campsites where children are alone with the non-working parent.

Ten years ago, AT&T ran an award-winning series of commercials that asked if anyone had ever done high-tech tasks like typing a budget at the beach, or making a sales call from a mountain top. The tag line for each scenario, delivered by Tom Selleck, was: "You will." Well, most of the "visions" from those commercials have been borne out, becoming an everyday part of modern life. What none of us seemed to realize, however, is that their predictions were not a promise, but a threat. Connectivity is soaring, both with the introduction of new information services and the geometric rate of their saturation at all levels of society. Sadly, most of us forget that communications technology should provide the potential for greater connectivity, not an obligation to accept it. Cell phones and pagers have forced ...

Click here to read the rest of this article from Computer User