Free Wireless For All (This Time I Mean Everybody) Update

On February 6, 2013, I blogged about a plan being proposed by the Federal Communications Commission, (FCC), and endorsed by the President that would provide free wireless access for internet and cell phones for everyone across our nation and what an equalizer it would be for people that couldn't afford the high tech stuff I often take for granted. Google and Microsoft and other tech giants claimed that this move would open the door for more creativity and innovation too.

On March 23, 2013 I blogged about a victim of Japan’s tsunami who said, “Rather than wait for government aid, we have to do it ourselves.” He was referring to getting his life and livelihood back on track and he used the internet to do it. I wrote that he had a lesson others living with disastrous situations with the similar result of devastation to life and livelihood (like poverty) and here is where I first began to understand the powerful concept of crowd sourcing.

In today’s update of sorts on free wireless for all and I mean everyone this time because I am talking about a global project, I should not have been surprised, but I was. The project I've been reading and thinking about is Google’s ambitious effort called Project Loon that uses balloons and solar energy to transport the technology into the stratosphere to create a network that provides free wireless for all, not just nationwide but truly for all, for our entire planet. I could say my best info came from reading about this project and indeed I have been “reading” about it but if you Google Project Loon you can watch it being explained via video. After watching some of the videos, I could go into the possibility of reading (and writing) becoming obsolete too but that is a subject for another blog. The videos gave me a quick overview of how the project works but what the world will do with free wireless and one less barrier is yet to be seen. I have also written about how our government is about a decade at minimum behind in lots of areas, like the Supreme Court deciding that you can’t patent genes ten years after drug companies did it, and I wonder how some countries’ governments, like China’s, will react as they attempt to regulate the internet when access is free.

All this leaves me to wonder with more questions than answers as usual. Perhaps we are on the verge or in the midst of a global renaissance. I hope so.