The Internet has been growing since Alexander Bell first showed the public the telephone in 1876.  It was an amazing new device that could be used to connect to another person over great distances and speak to them as if they were right next to you.

That was the first realization of the power of the Internet.

Today the Internet is is made up of two parts, the wired and the unwired, or wireless.

Our phone and cable networks, which are both run on fiber optic backbones or main links - make up the wired portion from above.

The wireless portion consist of radio, satellite, broadcast television, and cellular technologies.  These are constantly improved and made to carry more information.  Digital TV is going to be required pretty soon, so all over-the-air broadcasts will look and sound phenomenal.

Using these world-wide mediums, we can now get our voice, a picture, a live video feed, a document, or any other form of data to any person, anywhere on the planet.  Think cell phones, digital cameras, pagers, fax machines, laptops, etc.

That is the Internet as it slowly continues to evolve.  Everything is becoming connected.  Cameras are everywhere.  Communications from here to Hong Kong takes place in a split second.  Staying "in touch" is a given.

To stay in touch, we have pagers, PDAs, and cell phones.  The info-triever.  Get it, display it, use it.

E-mail will become instant messaging.  Sure, you can still deliver a message to be retrieved, read, and responded to at a later date.  But if the person you need to speak with is connected somewhere else on Earth, why not have it out instantly, instead of waiting?  Don't be confused when they speak of e-mail vs. IM (instant messaging).  They're one-in-the-same.  Unique user identification and guaranteed delivery because they're server based.

This page last updated 01/24/2008