Why I love my toaster

I’m a pretty technical guy and always have been. Since starting in the early days of fiber optics and digital switching for AT&T, I’ve been fortunate to work in technology areas of wireless, broadband and multimedia. I can describe in about two minutes how a modern telecommunications network delivers voice, data and video to a multitude of devices across disparate networks across the globe. So why is technology still so fickle?

Ericsson predicts there will be 50 billion devices connected to “the network” by 2020. Mary Meeker from Goldman forecasts more than 10 billion devices shipped in 2013 that are wirelessly connected. If you add up the number today for yourself, it adds up fast and easy to see how you get to the number with 7 billion people on the planet.

For just me, if I add them up:

• Garmin GPS navigation
• Garmin GPS running device
• Two phones at least – an iPhone and a Sony Ericsson
• Two PCs that are WiFi or 3G capable
• One Kindle
• Plus assorted digital cameras, iPods, Zunes, Bluetooth headsets, cable TV, etc.

(By the way, I love during security check on international flights when they ask me if you have anything battery operated and it takes five minutes to go through the list!)

Recently, I’ve experienced the best and worst of technology gone awry. My soft top on my car decided to stop working during mid-retraction, causing me to take out the manual, disassemble the dashboard to find the special tool, and make manual adjustments and locks that were beyond the call of duty of airline mechanics. My Sirius satellite radio has a kill switch in the dashboard to power on and off to get the signal back and forth. My Garmin watch sometimes locks in satellites, sometimes it decides not to. During my last trip, my iPhone had to be reset to allow mobile data to flow through. My laptop, during the flight back, got a black splotch on the backscreen for no apparent reason (pressure?). But I could keep going.

Recently, I needed to buy a toaster. You can’t imagine my thrill when I unpacked the box, plugged it into the wall, no blinking lights, no software, and it works. Brown or not so brown, pretty simple.

I remember more than ten years ago, we helped to set up the first Experience Center for a previous company in Stockholm. We were really proud of the “Screen Fridge”, a refrigerator that would know when you ran out of beer or milk and would signal and store to send you some more and automatically bill your account. The concept has never really taken off and you have to know to go buy what you need.

About the same time, I wrote a white paper on the need for migration from IPv4 to IPv6 addressing because of the need for billions of devices that need their own IP address. The time is actually now and we are running out of addresses.

And, I put together a multimedia presentation on “The Cultural and Social Impacts of Communications” …

(Need to pull both of them out to link here….)

But I still love that I can put on my running shoes and just hit the pavement. Or brown some toast.