An Interconnected World?

I picked up the Wednesday paper this week to get the Technology section (yes, I'm that much of a geek that I buy it only on Wednesday just for the Technology section) and there were a couple of articles about wireless connectivity.

And there was also an article that made it to the front page - Halloween costumes for iPods and cell phones! What retard would spend $40 to dress up their iPod in a pirate costume for Halloween?

But I digress. Back on topic...

The two articles in the paper: one is about wireless grids, and the other is about WiMax.

The wireless grid concept is simple: connect to device after device until you can reach your destination. Whether that destination be the internet or your TV screen, it seems like a good concept. This also, in turn, creates a very de-centralized network, which I think is a good thing.

If this idea does make it into the mainstream, it could be on most devices that support Bluetooth or WiFi (or possibly WiMax, I'll get to that later). You could turn your computer on in the morning, and log onto it from your PDA when you leave the house. After you're gone, your PDA can piggyback device after device until it finds one that it close enough to your computer and makes the connection. If they perfected the software, you could go around town and still have a connection to your home computer. And, with updated wireless connectivity, probably with little latency.

But the best part about this - they would have to make a Linux version, whether it's proprietary or not. Linux is on too many portable devices to simply ignore it. And in the future, it will most likely be on a good percentage of all portable devices (take that, Windows Mobile!)

Now about WiMax - I haven't read a lot about WiMax. All I have known about it up until now was that it is much faster than WiFi and has an incredibly huge range. Now, I have some more info about it, and it's something that I'd like to see around here in the future. For those of you who are like me and don't bother to read:

• WiMax = "Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access"
• WiMax has a max range 40 miles
• WiMax has a max speed of 70 Megabits per second (dang!)

So, if they could roll out just one WiMax tower in a city, everyone within it would have free internet at insane speeds.

But, what if we could combine these together? WiMax and wireless grids could become a good pair. You could drive up to 40 miles away from the tower (although, probably not quite 40 miles) and still be connected. If you drive out of range, you could start using wireless grids and connect to device after device until you could tunnel through to the internet. If you eventually drive out too far and there's another tower that is closer, you could piggyback other devices and connect to that tower instead.

Go far enough into the future, and everything from TV's to clocks could have built in wireless and support wireless grids. Everything would be wireless and you could control them all at once from some 'command center'. And with a future like that, proprietary standards have no place. Everything must consist of open standards for everything to be that interoperable.

That future sounds good to me :)

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