I remember my first modem, a 2400 Baud piece of shit.  "Baud" is a unit of speed in data transmission, equal to one bit per second (bps).

Quick tangent:  Eight bits in a byte.  A megabyte is 1000 kilobytes.  A kilobyte is 1000 bytes.  An old-ass floppy disk holds 1.4MB, a CD holds up to 700MB, and a DVD can hold 50GIG+****!  (*It has the potential for this amount.)

These days we don't hear the term baud anymore because it is no longer a good way to measure the data transmission speeds that are common.  Modem technology has developed a long way - 2400, 4800, 9600, 14.4, 28.8, 33.6, and now 56K.  If you're reading this page, you have heard of a 56K modem.  That's 56,000 Baud.  Compared to my first modem, that's screaming fast.  You don't want to even try downloading simple pictures at anything less that 14.4.

If you are trying to have a live videochat with 4 friends while playing Unreal Tournament and downloading hundreds of MP3s... uhhh, 56K isn't going to cut it.

That's where the term broadband comes into play.  A broadband connection to the 'Net means high speed access.  Anyone who's been in a college dorm knows what this means because just about every college campus is networked and provides a high-speed Internet connection in every room.  Basically, you're hooked up to a LAN (local area network) which in turn has a high-speed pipe to the WAN (wide area network), a.k.a. the Internet.

Lots of people already depend on their pipe to the 'Net.  I for one could not function without e-mail, my IM programs, and the WWWeb.  Logging in and finding, using/abusing data is a necessary part of life for me. 

Some people don't understand this, some even think it's bad.  Most people in this category are part of the older generations.  What if I took their phone away?  I bet they'd feel pretty lost if that happened to them.  They've grown dependant on that communications medium, they just haven't accepted it's evolution yet.

You see, telephones were just the beginning of the Internet.  The first steps in creating our communications network.  Step 1 was a simple voice call.  The next major accomplishment is when videocalls are standard.  After that, holographic displays that put you in the room with the person on the other end.

This page last updated 01/24/2008