| 07 June 2005 Convergence I nearly coughed up my cornflakes when I heard the latest on the Canadian terror cell, the one that was going to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The righteous young men were arraigned yesterday, and the Commonwealth attorney said that they had intended to kidnap the Canadian Prime Minister and behead him. In the same breath, the authorities reaffirmed their support for their open immigration policy, and the positive goodness that diversity has brought to the Great North. I tend to put my faith in technology. People are so patently loony, and determined to believe the most extraordinary things. I am committed to better living through microchips, and instantaneous communications. Industry experts are saying the most extraordinary things. They have a vision that everything is going to come together, converging. All the gadgets we carry around, the cell phones, the iPods, pagers, televisions, radios and cameras. All those functions will be incorporated into one device, and that device, in turn, will be able to work wirelessly, anywhere and everywhere we go. Convergence is a logical necessity. Just before I left the Government to pursue other variations of madness, I was in a position that required I be available at all times. That meant having a land-mobile radio, a standard Blackberry, my personal cell phone, and the post-attack priority cell phone that would work when all the other circuits were busy. I had a bandolier that I carried them all on, and fancied that it made me look like I was someone who was really connected. It started with a dream that became the cell phone. Imagine it- the human race liberated from the pay-phone at the gas station. There were some spectacular failures along the way. I studied one before it failed, the amazing Iridium phone system conceived and deployed by telecommunications giant Motorola. That was a breathtaking idea. Motorola launched hundreds of small satellites that fly within line-of-sight of one another, an orbiting army of them that keep almost the entire globe within view at any time, and seamlessly relay signals between rising and setting vehicles, world without end, no dropped calls, amen. It was staggeringly elegant, and it took all the world's space launch capability at the time, and more. The satellites were deployed from the launch vehicles by means of a rotating cylindrical rack, which if you looked closely, was exactly the same as the ones originally designed to deploy multiple independently targeted nuclear-tipped reentry vehicles. The MIRVs, as they were known, had the considerable benefit of enhancing the first-strike capability for U.S. strategic forces, which I recall as being a comfort at the time. It was about deterrence, I think, which was a logic that pushed us closer and closer to the brink in order to be safer. I'm glad I don't have to exercise my nuclear logic any more. It makes my head hurt. But Motorola did. Private space launch is an extraordinarily expensive thing, and the company was so desperate to keep the enterprise on schedule that it contracted with the Chinese to shoot the Iridium satellites into space. Some say that in so doing, the American company transferred all the technology needed to bring the Chinese weapons program a decade forward. It probably advanced their first-strike capabilities significantly, but I have trained myself not to think about those sorts of things. It didn't matter to the Motorola. The schedule was sacred. Eventually the constellation was complete, a low earth-orbit web of continuous coverage. The ground control was a marvel of efficiency. The billing scheme to manage call activity was a wonder. There was only one problem. People hated it. The handsets were the size of a brick, weighing just about as much, and ther was a huge bulbous antenna. They did not fit in your pocket; a holster was required, as big as one for a .44. As an additional nuisance, the phones did not work in places that did not have a clear view of one of the satellites. That meant they didn't work inside, or even in the shadow of a tall building. You could identify an Iridium phone user by the shoebox pressed against his ear, walking further and further into the vastness of the parking lot to complete an important call. The Iridium solution was simultaneously elegant and stupid. Meanwhile, terrestrial service providers were busy nailing repeaters onto buildings and towers, and marketing tiny little phones that fit in your pocket. It took a while, but coverage is now pretty good all across the country, or at least next on the Interstate where we spend most of our time. The entire Motorola business case fell apart. The losses were as staggering as the original vision. I am confident that convergence is going to be here before you know it. I am turning off my conventional land-line this week, and going all mobile. I now have no less than five lines attached to my Verizon account, with 3,000 anytime minutes and a broadband card for my lap-top that makes it a mobile phone all by itself. I am connected to everything and nothing at the same time. It is a little awkward to sling the computer on my old bandolier, but I am getting used to it.. I am confident there will be a converged device that will tincoporate every function, and that they will be able to downsize the tips of my fingers to fit the little keypad. I have faith in technology. Oh, I don't have to tell you what Motorola did with Iridium. Of course they sold it to the government, the least converged institution in the world. Copyright 2006 Vic Socotra |