A "Connections" moment

[mangosteen]

For those of you who never saw the series "Connections" on your local public television station, it was a wonderful series of shows that talked about the various baby-steps and breakthroughs that happened through time to get from point A to point B (e.g. from the first coinage to modern rocketry). There was a bit of political posturing, and a little bit of data-torturing, but all in all it was a fascinating series of shows, and would recommend them to anyone. Elias-Bob says check in your local public library for the videotapes. I know for a fact that the Boston public library has them.

Anyway, the point of this exercise is that every now and then, one is momentarily forced to look at The Bigger Picture, and see how what you take for granted today was built up over a very long period of time, advance upon advance, to get you to something remarkably commonplace now, but unheard of even a few years ago.

In this particular instance, I'm talking about making a pot of tea (Lapsang Souchong, to be precise), having breakfast, and sitting down to read the paper in the morning. The tea and breakfast are nothing new. However....

....reading the paper on the web, while on my laptop, with integrated wireless networking, going to a tiny wireless base station sitting 35 feet above me, which then goes to my cable modem, out through the cable TV lines, out to the Internet and back in about 40 milliseconds....

....is simply astounding, if you actually stop to think about it.

Comments

[gingicat]

Indeed. And sometimes it's good to remember it.

Ten years ago, my dad started working for an Israeli organization and got the first of several fax machines for his home office. He remarked at the time that it seemed magical to be able to transmit images via a telephone line -- something I'd been taking for granted.

but can you connect the "inventor"...

[cthulhia]

of the tea (or who made it popular in the west)
and the wireless connection, via o, genetic research AND the pre-raphaelites.

[magid.livejournal.com]

you might be interested in the book "glass, paper, beans," which is about glass, paper, and (coffee) beans, discovery of, uses of, production of, day-in-the-life-of-a-worker-of, etc. i know this is a boring description, but somehow it's a fascinating book. (to this geek, anyway)

[awfief.livejournal.com]

while it's interesting, 1/2 of me wants to say, "wow, you're being an arrogant geek who's trying to proselytize (sp?) the wonders of your super-speed, orgasmic connection."

On the other hand, I'm wishing my place had wireless, because my work does, and i hate having to plug my laptop in at home. :)