Wireless internet makes other technologies obsolete

Modern technology has advanced at a rate that continues to amaze even the most enthusiastic gadget nerd. Over the course of about two decades, technologies like wireless Internet have completely revolutionized the way we live. These advances have changed the culture of companies, schools and even normal social interaction.

While many people often make the comparison between the time before wireless Internet and the present, fewer consider the many changes such technologies have created along the way. For example, most people have completely forgotten about dial-up Internet access, or perhaps erased it from their memory after years of therapy! This inconvenient predecessor to wireless internet used to be the only way you could get online not too long ago. If you wanted to check your email, you had to connect to a modem connected to your home phone line. No one else in the house could make or receive a phone call while you were surfing the web, instant messaging your friends (probably with AOL Instant Messenger), or playing online games. And remember that horrible grinding noise you had to listen to every time your computer tried to connect to the Internet? And what about all the time you had to spend sitting and waiting for each web page to load? It sure is much more enjoyable to be able to go online using fast, quiet and reliable wireless internet!

Another intermediate step in the Internet revolution that is now obsolete is the Internet cafe. It used to be that these cafes lined the streets of various urban locations. They were a new hot spot to be seen while having a latte and checking your email. For those who are simply too young to remember: an Internet cafe was a store that had computers inside that could be rented by the minute to access the Internet. Sometimes there was also a proper coffee area, where you could order a coffee or a pastry to eat while surfing the net (be careful with the keyboards of course!). But now that you can buy a small laptop for $300 and then take it to any library, cafe or airport and go online without a problem, these internet cafes are simply irrelevant. Also, in most public and private places, you can access wireless Internet for free! And then, over the last decade or so, internet cafes started to become less and less profitable and, one by one, began to close in cities across the United States. People now bring their own personal computers to cafes, or may even find it more cost-effective to install wireless Internet in their homes, where they can access it 24 hours a day.

It really is amazing to think how fast technology is changing the world around us. All of these changes have occurred in about 20 years, or one generation. One day, dial-up modems and Internet cafes will seem like relics from a distant time, like horse carriages or petticoats.