If you had to explain wireless technology to
someone who’d never heard of it, how would you do it?
Or better yet, how would you explain accessing
wireless internet via your smartphone to someone who’s never heard of the
internet at all?
Popular ideas include explaining it like
access to an infinite library and/or a public forum in your pocket but even
then explaining the actual technology would be a huge uphill struggle even
though the concept might hit home with them.
With this in mind, would that be a problem? Do
we need to understand exactly how the technology we use works? Do most people
even understand how wireless internet works if they use it every day? Or do
they simply count on their wireless internet provider to deliver it to them and
save some mind-share for memes and photos of cats?
In many cases it’s not actually that important
for every person using technology to know exactly how it works and we see this
at every level of technology we deal with on a daily basis.
Even though many of us drive cars we’re not
all aware of every part of the car, how it works and how to fix it if it’s
broken. The same goes for our phones and laptops, our showers and boilers; the
list goes on.
This is why we’ve got specialists who fix and
maintain them for us and it’s also why most promotions you see about modern
products and services, whether that’s wireless internet or a car, don’t focus
on the technical specifications of said product or service.
Wireless internet providers might tell you
about what you can use it for (“Stream 4K video in the comfort of your home.”)
or tell you what problem it fixes (“Your business no longer has to deal with
laggy video conferencing with our wireless internet offering!”) but rarely do
they go into the finer detail of the technology. Unless, of course, they’re
aiming to sell exclusively to IT professionals.
Even though we can then agree that not
everyone needs to understand the ins and outs of any given technology to
utilise it in their lives we do tend to learn about many historical
technological advances throughout our education. We learn about Henry Ford and
the car, Graham Bell and the phone as well as so many other innovators so how
will future educators deal with wireless internet? Will we see entire chapters
dedicated to the most innovative wireless internet providers? Will it be
skimmed over or will there be a deep dive?
A sneak peek into what it could look like can
be found in a great article by Explain That Stuff from last year where they
trace the history of wireless technology, both in terms of wireless internet as
well as other tech like radio and TV, offering easily digestible insight in
layman’s terms.
So if this is of interest, click here to read more and check out some of
Luminet’s wireless offerings to see how we’re looking to innovate the way your
business uses its connectivity solutions.
