Wi-Fi, Hi-Fi, Bu-bye

Hang on . . . this may not make sense. In fact, if it does make sense you are way ahead of me!

Last night, I finally got around to reading Newsweek's June 7th issue on "Way Cool Phones." As a person who believes I should know the meaning of every word I read, or take time to find it out, I was immediately put off by "Wi-Fi." What has happened to me?

Last week, I was talking with my friend, David, about his album collection. His "albums" are CDs. My albums are, well albums. When I was a kid, we listened to our albums on "Hi-Fi's." When did Wi-Fi's come about? The article never did identify the term, but I was heartened to see in the Letters to the Editor section of the following week's Newsweek that arrived today, that many readers wrote in to ask "What's a Wi-Fi?" Whew! "Wireless-Fidelity" was the answer . . . okay . . .

Continuing on with this great article on all the things my cell phone will one day be able to do for me (or could now if I bought a new one) (TV shows, GPS, Internet, games, e-mail, video, etc. etc)... I quickly encountered more and more words (even phrases) with which I, an Editor!, was completely unfamiliar and could not decipher:

"...then some geeks came up with a new communications standard exploiting an unlicensed part of the spectrum (which the wonks at the FCC called "junk band," stuff designated for techno-flotsam like microwave ovens and cordless phones). It was called 802.11 and only later sexed up with the Wi-Fi moniker."

WHAT?

Here are some new terms:
"bandwidth liberator" "WiMax" "cyberaction"

How about this:
"Consider the MIT Media Lab project to install Wi-Fi base stations on intervillage buses in India: when the vehicles stop to pick up passengers, computer users within range can use the signal to download files or send e-mail."

I can hear it now... "Teacher, my term paper isn't done because the bus was not on schedule."

More terms in Newsweek:
"Bluetooth" "RFID" "Zig-Bee (a way to network appliances)" The author of this article defines photography (the traditional kind like I have in a shoebox) as "flat illustrative artifact[s]."

In the same issue, there is an article entitled "Making the Ultimate Map." Steven Levy states:
"...just over the azimuth [now there's a good word!] is the holy grail of mapping, where every imaginable form of location-based information is layered onto an aggregate construct that mirrors the whole world." [Yowzah!] "Eventually, between the databases, the parsing and the geo-hackers, millions of places will be digitally annotated, and the experience of traveling the world will be akin to visiting a museum with an exquisitely informed guide."

Yes, but will it be any easier to bring my dog along?

Just when I thought all was lost, as far as my keeping up, I received the June 21st issue of TIME Magazine. In "10 Questions for David Sedaris" (author of "Me Talk Pretty One Day") Sedaris is asked about his familiarity with the Internet:
"I've never seen the Internet. I don't have e-mail. I just enjoy lying on the couch and reading a magazine. When people say, 'You should visit my Web page,' I'm always perplexed by it. Why? What do you do there?"

Summary:
I feel about a hundred and three years old. My 21-year-old knows more than I do. I think I'm "cyber-savy" because I can view my bank account online and create a business website. . . . All this high-faluting techno-babble drives me to the simple pleasures of a chocolate chip cookie, a glass of milk and the Columbus Dispatch newspaper. It costs fifty cents, doesn't require typing to navigate, and I can use it to line the bird cage. I'm sure one day it may be obsolete, but until then I'll shake the tech confusion from my brain every morning, grab a cup of coffee and stare at the front porch, looking for information delivered the old-fashioned way: by a kid on a bike.