Wireless overview

For those unintiated to the world of wireless technology, CNN.com offers an overview of what the technology is about and what some of its effects are on our society.

Important ideas include that the future will see most of our devices and appliances (including cars and household machines) connected to the Internet. As a result, people who are away from the office are still finding themselves heavily involved in their work. Being 'connected' means being unable to disconnect from the world and have some downtime to contemplate life. In other words, it's another step in the western world's loss of "spiritual development."

In the article, an author (Dave Mock) is quoted as saying that, "...technology is ahead of our culture." But this is hardly new. New technology is always ahead of its time, and it causes people to change the way they do things such as communicate. What seems annoying at first gradually becomes commonplace and accepted.

But the really important issue concerning wireless technology, especially as it becomes ubiquitous in our various devices, is privacy. If we are constantly connected to the digital world, we stand the risk of having our digital lives intruded upon by hackers. Security will be an ever-present, non-stop concern in a world of wireless connectivity.

People's habits will become subject to scrutiny. For example, when we visit any site on the Web, when we click on any hyperlink, there is a history of that being stored on a server somewhere. Google has a huge repository of our 'clickstream' and intends to use that in future versions of its Web search engine to create personalized search results. To be fair, this use of our clickstreams is already being used by Amazon.com.

So, it sounds like there is a lot of concern about the wireless world we are heading towards. It's a good thing, I guess, that we talk about these issues because the more we talk, the more people become better prepared for this new world of ours. But just to be clear about my position, I'm all for wireless connectivity. If I want to take a vacation and contemplate spiritual matters, I'll do my best to leave my devices at home.