The Wireless Future
Nothing’s so dated as yesterday’s futurism. In 1993 naming a high-tech magazine “Wired†must have seemed really hip. Today “wired†devices are yesterday’s tech. No one wants a mess like this one, but everyone’s got one:
Slowly that’s starting to change. Network, speaker, microphone, mouse, and keyboard cables are already going wireless. Disks, cameras, and monitors are going to follow. By the end of this decade, most systems should have a power cord and nothing more. By 2020 even the power cord might vanish. It’s obvious the future belongs to wireless. After all, every cable you can remove from your system is one less leash tethering you to your desk. 802.11 is de rigueur for notebooks and increasingly common in desktops. Cell phones let us communicate from anywhere. Infrared remote controls freed us from commercials and gave rise to the clicker. And Bluetooth is rapidly becoming the preferred way to connect computers to low bandwidth peripherals like keyboards and mice.
