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Email has now filled a place in our hearts, taking the place of "snail-mail" which used to overfill our mailboxes not too long ago! Our electronic postings, complete with attachments . . . and pictures, are delivered instantly, any time of the day or night. With the versatility of sending these precious bit-streams of data to multiple recipients, this form of communications has managed to decrease United States Postal Service revenues by billions of dollars. As they continue to operate, year after year; even with postage increases - they"re always in the red! .
Today, networks have allowed the sharing of information and resources, without even having to leave the office. Increased flexibility and future technological developments must be able to overcome the very basic "medium" in our communication system today; that is . . . the hard-wired communication line. As electronic circuits continue to shrink in size . . . and become increasingly more powerful, the computer industry, along with our telecommunications giants have been very busy trying to find ways to sever those ties.
Over a decade ago, the laptop computer was introduced. We were finally "free" to work anywhere we wanted - that is, until the battery died. The only thing remaining between us and "true-freedom" was the dreaded phone line! The late 1980's gave birth to what could eventually eliminate this last obstacle to wireless networks. As the inventor of the cellular phone, Marty Cooper, put it recently: .
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"The Internet of the future is a host of applications that are delivered to people, at a price they can afford. The Internet is thirty young minds flipping through Web pages as fast as they can absorb them, while sitting on the porch with the family, or in the park. The Internet is an elderly person, or heart patient, or maybe anyone conducting a visit to the doctor electronically, not when they can get an appointment, but when they"re sick, by virtue of already existing devices that read a person's vital signs and deliver them to a doctor instantly and allow her, or him, to prescribe to the patient that can see their face.
