Current Event Post

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/business/10novel.html?_r=1&ref=technology

The current event I found titled Wider Streets for Internet Traffic by Anne Eisenberg from nytimes.com was about how our use for the Internet has increased so much there are worries that technology will not be able to keep up with our hunger for the Internet.  The future of Internet transportation is fiber optics, which is sending the information by light waves down tiny fibers.  The reason why light is used is because its an electromagnetic so information can be put on each varying wavelength.  In the past it was just based off of the intensity of light, sending a signal of either being on or off.

The most interesting point made in the article is that many professionals in the field never thought this technology would be needed since information can already travel at such fast speeds with the technology we already have.  Now everyone is worried that if the rate of every one's Internet use continues to grow the way is has been this new technology might not be able to do the job fast enough.  One electrical engineer is quoted as saying, "We are looking at a point soon where we cannot satisfy demand and if we don't it will be like going over a cliff."  When this problem was expressed to the class no one seemed particularly worried about this, not because they would be able to handle using the Internet less but because they just figured more servers could be put up and that could solve the problem.  This shows a very common view of the Internet in American culture which is that most of us do not see the Internet as physical thing that is also limited to the laws of physics.

Another question that comes up is that should we let ourselves reach this "cliff" or should we start now to limit ourselves to soften the blow?  If we reached this limit today we would basically being going off the Internet cold turkey and there would be panic.  It would be a horrible blow to the economy and a line of communication will be shut off which many people rely on.  With everyone using the Internet as a global market place and people having the Internet as the only form of contact to at least someone in their life for our case we only have contact with our teacher through the Internet like these blog entries.  We know their would be panic if this happens since every time our class cannot figure out how to send in their homework our teacher gets flooded with emails.