Thesis 56

The necessary network infrastructure does not exist.

Whether they themselves are infrastructural or mobile in nature, all of the visions of everyware we've considered in this book depend vitally on near-universal broadband network access.

And although it frequently seems that each day's newspaper brings word of another large-scale Internet access initiativefrom Philadelphia's effort to provide a blanket of free municipal Wi-Fi to Google's similar endeavor on behalf of San Franciscothe network infrastructure so necessary to these visions simply does not exist yet in most places.

Even in the United States, broadband penetration is significantly less than total, and as of the end of 2005, many Internet users still eke by with dial-up connections. The problem is particularly exacerbated in areas far from the dense urban cores, where the possibility of ever being fully wiredlet alone richly provided with overlapping areas of wireless serviceis simply out of the question. Given the economics involved, even in an age of satellite broadband, it's been speculated that some analogue of the Tennessee valley Authority's Rural Electrification Program of the 1930s might be necessary if universal high-speed connectivity is ever to be a reality.

Newer technologies like WiMAX, especially as used to support mesh networks, show every sign of addressing these issues, but we'll have to wait for their scheduled deployment during 2006-2007 to see whether they make good on the claims of their proponents. Unless these challenges can be resolved, all we'll ever be able to build is a computing that is indeed ubiquitous, but only in some places.

If this sounds like an absurdity, it isn't. Many of these places will be domains large enough for the bulk of our social and experiential concerns to come into play: corporate and university campuses, even entire cities. It may simply be some time before these concerns are fully relevant to the majority of people, even in the developed nations.

Finally, though raising this point may sound an odd note here, we should never forget that many human places abide without electricity, running water, or sewerage, let alone Internet access. As much as I believe that information is power, there's no question that shelter, safe drinking water and sanitation come firston Maslow's pyramid and in any development scheme I'd want to endorse. Whatever promise everyware may extend to us, it will be quite some time indeed until we all get to share its benisons on anything like an equal footing.