GoogleNet – The Air We Breathe
Many sci-fi themes and novelists have written about and alluded to a possible declined global environment due to over industrialization and massive toxic accumulation –an environmental condition so bad that every human must wear air purification or respirator devices just to survive the day-to-day routine. The protagonist or evil character in that scenario was the corporation who supplied you with fresh air. They were the ones who determined who lived and died by who paid their bills on time.
While in this reality we can still shoot for such a scenario –come on evil oil burning corporations, let’s go! But If sustainability and alternative energies hit their tipping points it may not be a likelihood, thank goodness. But what I’m after here is what do we define as air? If that is open to redefining, then we may see an enslaved sci-fi possibility sooner than later. I’m talking GoogleNet, possibly.
For humans, air is life –it’s what keeps you going. In the ancient days of shipping by sail, air was the power behind you. If a fire wishes to rage, then it must have air to breath and flame. In our well-connected modern communications life of ecommerce, social networking and VoIP, WiFi and broadband connection is the “air” we breathe. If it’s not on and flowing, we suffocate.
It this definition of air that gives force to our business communications and rapidly sends our transactions over the net. Quite often these days our mood is determined not just by our health and mental outlook but by how many bars we are seeing in our wireless connection icons on our various mobile platforms.
Now from what I could last I could glean, was that Google plans to trial test its free Wi-Fi coverage in San Francisco, with eventual plans to roll out such a service nation wide. Users, I mean potential customers, can opt for a $19.95 plan to access increased bandwidth and service support. This scenario of service provision is being developed in most major cites everywhere.
So a question I would like to ask is how will we know that GoogleNet, or as I see it Google “Air,” is not coming to us filtered or even flavored by a corporate sponsored agenda of some sort? Google has already re-defined how and which web pages live and die due to their rules of search engine ranking. What other rules will we have to follow, guised as technological advancements, as they continue to dominate digital content delivery.
What if the good air, the place where you want and need to get your digital content from, just happens to be the realm in which you have to pay for it? The “good air” being items such as: video content, VoIP, or any new and evolving social/business standard of exchange. Then what good is free? If you can’t play where you must, you might as well just die. A digital death anyways –but isn’t that everything nowadays?
I suppose I’m just a Utopian who understands that there are other innovative and culturally enhancing ways for service providers to make money other than charging for the pipe. If only we could just re-appropriate that nine billion dollars in Iraq redevelopment fund that has recently gone missing we could have a lot free things in our lives. Here’s to breathing easy and free wirelessly.
Story Links:
http://gigaom.com/2005/09/30/google-confirms-san-francisco-wifi-plans/
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2005/09/01/8356497/index.htm
https://home.featherwifi.net/sanfrancisco
