Introduction
Wireless internet has now become a way of life. It is all around us. Our society has now moved from the ability of being linked by a cord to access the internet to the availability of accessing the world wide web by using wireless capabilities. The way we receive news and media has changed since the invention of wireless. This technology has become so common that one may rarely think about it at all when using it. The days of plugging up a computer to an Ethernet cord to be connected to the internet has become a thing of the past. Surely this method is of course still used, but it has become a less modern way to connect to the World Wide Web. When you want to see what the weather forecast will be in your area, it is as simple as opening up your phone and punching in your zip code. It has also made the ability for ratings to be gathered for televsision shows using netowrking sites such as twitter and facebook. These sites can be access through wireless on mobile phones (Spangler, 2011).
Presently more applications are being developed that allow the use of wireless internet. These applications can be downloaded for celluar phones, tablets, ipads, and ipods. One application that I have used is an application called Kazzam. This application is truly amazing and I has been helpful in several situations. Have you ever heard a song that you loved and could not get it out of your head? Everywhere you go you are always hearing this song and you wonder who is the artist? Well, the Kazzam application gives you the ability to find that song. You simply turn the application on, put the phone up to the speaker or general area from where the sound is being emitted, and let the phone listen to the song. In a matter of minutes the application will aquire results that give you the title and artist of the song. It also gives the ability to look up any additional information about the artist, lyrics to the song, the artist website, any videos from the artist, and it suggests similar artists that are in that same genre.
Wireless internet has even made it possible for people to access files from their computers desktop without having to be in front of the actual computer. The other day I downloaded an application that allowed me to use my touch pad on my phone as a substitute for the mouse on my computer. It also allowed me the options of adjusting the volume, and accessing and controlling my iTunes. The fact that this was all accomplished from my phone is amazing. There are so many devices that exist today that help us get information in such a rapid manner by using this great technology. The uses for wireless internet are vast and it will be greatly interesting to see how even more advanced our society will become in the future with the use of this technology. Mass Communication professionals should learn about wireless technology because it is prevelant and it will continue to grow in the future. It is constantly changing the way we get and view our media.
Background
In order to understand where wirelesss technology originated, one must look at the telephone and a man named Guglielmo Marconi. Alexander Graham Bell was the first person to transfer speech electronically. It was not until 1895 that marconi sent the data message that was wireless through the radio using a system called Morse Code. (Grant & Meadows, 2010). The growing popularity of the telephony led many to experiment with Marconi’s radio technology as another means of interpersonal communication (Grant & Meadows, 2010 para. 4). Since then, developers have used that same concept and successfully gave the world another invention to communicate through with wireless. This phenomenon was the internet that was used with computers.
The internet was first used to allow computers to share information on research and development in scientific and military fields in the 1960’s (Howe, 2010 para. 1). MIT researcher J.C.R Licklider was the first person to propose a global network of computers in 1962. He later, in that same year, joined the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency also known as DARPA to develop his proposal. Leonard Klienrock, an MIT and UCLA researcher, developed the theory of packet switching which he proposed would be the sole basis for the connection of the internet. Another MIT researcher by the name of Lawrence Roberts in 1965 attempted to connect a computer in California with a computer in Massachusetts using dial up telephone lines. This attempt was very successful. It showed that it is possible for two computers to share information and be connected with each other in wide area networking. It also showed that the circuit switiching that lied in the telephone was inadequate proving that Klienrock’s theory of packet switching was factual (Howe, 2010).
Roberts then moved over to DARPA so he could develop and plan the idea of the APRANET. The ARPANET received its name because it was under a contract led by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) and was brought online in 1969. It became the first name of what is now known as the internet. The ARPANET initially consisted of four major computers that were connected to different universities. The universities included University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), Stanford Research Institute, University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), and the University of Utah. The contract was carried out by BBN, a technology company in Cambridge Massachusetts. It was under the supervision of Bob Kahn and went online in December 1969. People were extremely fascinated and in June of 1970, companies, corporations, and academic institutions such as MIT, Harvard, BBN, and Systems Development Corp (SDC) were starting to realize the importance of this new system and was added to the connection of these four major computers (Howe, 2010). By January 1971, Stanford, MIT’s Lincoln Labs, Carnegie-Mellon, and Case-Western Reserve University were also added (Howe, 2010 para. 2). In many months to come NASA and their AMES Research Center, Mitre, Borroughs, RAND, and the Univeristy of Illinois were all plugged into the network. After these big corporations and Institutions joined the ARPANET connection, many other companies joined as well (Howe, 2010).
The reason the internet was originally designed was to provide a means of communications through a network that would work even if some of the sites were destroyed by nuclear attacks (Howe, 2010 para. 3). If the most direct route of the was not available, routers would direct traffic around the network via alternate routes (Howe, 2010 para. 3). A routers purpose is to connect networks together and control the routing of packets from source to destination. They also provide alternate paths when necessary (Howe, 2010). In the early years of the internet, it was used by computer experts, engineers, scientists, and librarians (Howe, 2010 para. 3). Unlike the internet of today, it was not very friendly. They were not used for home or as personal computers. Anyone who used it in those days, whether you were a computer professional or even a librarian, had to learn a very complex system. Electronic mail also known as E-mail was adapted by APRANET in 1972 by Ray Tomlinson, an employee of BBN(Howe, 2010). He picked the @ symbol from the available symbols on his teletype to link the username and address. He also invented the telnet protocol which enables the ability to log on to a remote computer (Howe, 2010 para. 5). The file transfer protocol enabled the file transfers between internet sites and was published as a Request for Comments (RFC) in 1973 and from then on RFC were available electronically to anyone who had use of the ftp protocol (Howe, 2010 para.5).
In the 1970’s the internet began to mature and as a result of the TCP and IP development first proposed by Bob Kahn at BBN and further developed by Kahn and Vint Cerf at Stanford and others throughout the 70’s(Howe, 2010 para. 7). In 1980 the Defense Department adopted the TCP/IP which replaced the earlier protocol that was used called Network Control Protocol (NCP). By 1983 this was universally adopted. BITNET used it and connected to IBM mainframes for the educational community and the world to provide mail services beginning in 1981 (Howe, 2010 para. 9). A software called Listserv was developed for this network and later others. Gateways were developed to connect BITNET with the internet and allowed exchanges of e-mail (Howe, 2010).
The commands for the e-mail, FTP, and telnet became standardized and as a result it became much easier for people who did not understand the complex algorithims to use the net. It was not as easy as our standards today in internet, but it did open the door to the use of many more computers in univerisites. Many departments of organizations used the internet to communicate with fellow collegues around the world. It also made the ability to share files and resources a great deal easier. In the beginning, the number of sites on the internet remained releatively small and it was easy to keep track of . As more universities, organizations, and libraries used the internet the tracking of sites became difficult. Developers realized that an index for resources that were available was greatly needed (Howe, 2010). In 1989, Peter Deutsch and his crew at McGill University in Montreal decided to create an archive for the ftp sites (Howe, 2010 para. 13). They named this archive Archie. The software was designed to periodlically reach out to all known and available ftp sites and list their files. Archie would then build a searchable index of those particular files. To search files in Archie, you had to be knowledgeable in the unix commands that the software used to fully use the software (Howe, 2010).
The same time Archie was being constructed Brewster Kahle, who worked for Thinking Machines Corporation, developed the Wide Area Information System (WAIS). This system allowed for archiving of full text files in a database. Many versions of WAIS was released. Some were more complex than others, but the simplest version was distributed to everyone in the net (Howe, 2010). In 1991, the first friendly computer interface was developed by the university of Minnesota. The university wanted to develop a simple menu system to access files and information on campus throughout their local network(Howe, 2010 para. 16). In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee and his crew at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, proposed a new protocol for information distribution which we now know as the World Wide Web. WWW was based on the use of hypertext, a system of embedding links in text that would link to other texts (Howe, 2010 para. 18). The graphical browser Mosiac was developed by Marc Andreessen and his team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) (Howe, 2010 para. 17). Andreessen then worked for the Netscape Corporation which at the time produced the most successful graphical type of browser and server. Microsoft then decided to develop their own graphic brower called Microsoft Internet Explorer (Howe, 2010).
The internet was originally funded by the government and it was limited to research, education, and government. Personal uses was prohibited unless it served the goals of research and education (Howe, 2010 para. 18). This continued until the early 90’s when independent commercial networks began to grow. These commercial networks made it possible to route traffic across the country from one commercial site to another without passing through the government funded NSFN internet backbone (Howe, 2010 para. 18). Delphi became the first national online service to offer subscribers internet services. After Delphi, companies such as AOL, Prodigy, and CompuServe came online. The release of Microsoft’s software Windows 98 became a great breakthrough in the internet world. Higher speed connections were being established. 56K modems were being used for a while by many internet service providers. The frequent use of multimedia, such as sound and video, could not be carried on 56k modems and in return low quality video was the result (Howe, 2010).
Current Status Presently 56k modems are a thing of the past. Digital Subscriber lines (DSL) or High Speed Internet are very promininat now. In June 2007, high speed internet access via Digital Subscriber Lines was available to 82% of Households in America (Grant & Meadows, 2010 para. 4). Since 1895, when Guglielmo Marconi invented wireless technology by transmitting the three-dot Morse Code using electromagnetic waves, this technology has changed the world and has become increasingly popular (Grant & Meadows, 2010). Travelers no longer need to be connected to the internet with wires or cables. With the invention of the WiFi Hot spot many people can connect while they are away from the home or office. Places like airports, coffee bars, hotels, and academic institutions now provide these services for a certain price or for free (Howe, 2010).
Municiple Wi-Fi or city-wide access, and wiMax offer broader ranges for wireless internet (Howe, 2010). Wireless networks work by using radio waves. These are the same waves that are found in cell phones, televisions, and radio’s. Most new desktop and laptop computers have a wireless transmitter. This adapter translates data into a radio signal and then transmits it using an attenna (Brain & Wilson, 2011 para. 1). The wireless router then receives the signal and begans to decode it. The router will then send the information to the internet using a wired ethernet cord. The process can also work in reverse with the router receiving information from the internet, translating it into a radio signal, and then sending it to the computer’s wireless transmitter (Brain & Wilson, 2011 para 2). As long as they have wireless adapters, several devices can use one router to connect to the internet (Brain & Wilson, 2011).
If the computer does not have a wireless transmitter a wireless adapter can be purchased which will act as the computers wireless transmitter. These wirleless adapters can plug into the computers PC card slot or in the USB port. Once you have installed the wireless adapters and any other drivers that allow for it to operate, you should be able to discover any existing networks. When you turn your computer on in any area that has a WiFi hotspot, you should be able to choose whether or not you should be able to connect to any wireless networks that exist. The Wireless connection is convienent, virtually invisible, and fairly reliable. Other devices that use wireless technology are celluar phones, televisions, bluetooths, remote controls, cordless phones, portable two way communication devices such as walkie talkies, ipods, tablets, cameras, gaming devices, printers, keyboards, and mouses. It can also be used with PDA’s which are small handheld elctronic devices (Kim, Holmes, & Mims, 2005). These are just some of the vast amount of devices that uses wireless technology (Brain & Wilson, 2011). Wireless technology in the future is expected to increase in the addition of 4G technology. As 3G or third generation technology has become overwhelmed by the amount of data that is needed and a demand for something that is higher quality in speed is growing faster and faster in our society (Imthiyaz, 2011) . 4G technology offers voice, data, and streamed multimedia provided to users on an “Anytime, Anywhere” basis and at much higher data rates than previous generation technologies (Imthiyaz, 2011 para.9) Applications such as wireless broadband access, multimedia messaging services (MMS), video chat and mobile TV, HDTV content, and Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) are all being developed to use 4G networks (Imthiyaz, 2011 para. 9). There are talks of a new 5G technology that will come out sometime in 2012. This technology will accommodate growing traffic data in the internet (Imthiyaz, 2011). Of the estimated 3.4 billion people who will have broadband by 2014, 80 percent will be mobile broadband subscribers (Imthiyaz, 2011 para. 12). A concept of flat IP network is the key concept of making 5G network work. Flat IP networks provides a way of indentifying devices using symbolic names unlike the hierarchical architecture of the “normal” IP addess (Imthiyaz, 2011 para. 15). One of the benefits of the shift to Flat IP address would be the reduction of the number of network elements in the data path. This would lower operations costs and capital expenditures (Imthiyaz, 2011). Some social issues that are occurring with wireless technology is the proposed National Broadband Plan. In conjuction with the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program that was established the Recovery Act of 2009, the FCC was also asked to create a National Broadband Plan (Grant & Meadows, 2010 para. 7). The mission of the plan is to create a high-performance America- a more creative, effiecient America in which affordable broadband is available everywhere and everyone has the means and skills to use valuable broadband applications (Federal Communications Commission , 2009 para.1). Other countries such as South Korea, Japan, Austrailia, Sweden. Finland, and Germany have already developed and established their own broadband plans. The FCC feels that the United States government cannot stand by and let other countries lead the world the world into the new digital era (Federal Communications Commission , 2009 para.3).
To ensure that America is leading the world, the FCC has developed several goals that is incorporated in the National Broadband Plan. The first goal is for at least 100 million U.S homes should have affordable access to actual download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second and actual upload speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Federal Communications Commission , 2009 para. 6). The FCC would like for this to take in effect at least by the year 2020. Goal number two is the United States should at lead the world in mobile innovation, with the fastest and most expensive wireless networks of any nation (Federal Communications Commission , 2009 para.11). The third goal of the National Broadband Plan is every American should have affordable access to robust broadband service, and the means and skills to subscribe if they so choose (Federal Communications Commission, 2009 para.16). The fourth goal of the plan is to ensure that every American community should have affordable access to at least 1 gigabit per second broadbancd service to anchor institutions such as schools, hospitals, and government buildings (Federal Communications Commission , 2009 para.23). The fifth goal of the plan is to ensure that the safety of the American people, every first responder should have access to a nationwide, wireless, interoperable broadband public safety network (Federal Communications Commission , 2009 para. 28). The final goal of the National Broadband Plan is to ensure that America leads in the clean energy economy, every American should be able to use broadband to track and manage their real-time energy consumption (Federal Communications Commission , 2009 para. 33). This means that America should no longer rely on the fossil fuels and imported oils of the world states should take lead and encourage more participation of renewable power, grid, and vehicle electrification, so the U.S has an energy effiecient economy (Federal Communications Commission , 2009 para. 34).
Effects
One of the long term effects of the use of wireless technology is the exposure of electromatic fields and radio frequency from wireless technology. Scholars believe that there is a strong association between cancer and wireless technology especially in mobile phones (Ahlborn, Green, Kheifets, Savitz, & Swerdlow, 2004) . Many studies have shown that there is a strong risk of brain tumors, cancer, and acoutstic neuromas when exposed to prolonged volumes of electromatic fields .The first case study of brain tumors that was done was in Sweden 2001. These studies included adult cases that were diagnosed in two regions in Sweden between 1994 and 1996 (Ahlborn, Green, Kheifets, Savitz, & Swerdlow, 2004). The adults are surpisingly still alive. Studies showed that prolonged use of cell phones and wireless technology aquiring devices can increase the users risk of developing a brain tumor and other heath related issues (Ahlborn, Green, Kheifets, Savitz, & Swerdlow, 2004).
This will become a increasingly large problem because wireless internet has been around for a long time. Many people have had exposure to the technology, especially young adults like myself. People who have practically grown up with wireless technology. It makes one wonder since a person has been exposed to wireless for a number of years, could the younger generation be in for a catastrophic epidemic of serious health issues. It will also become a more prevelant problem because as most devices become wireless, citizens will be surrounded everywhere and exposed to radio frequencies that wireless technology emits. There would really be no way to get away from it.
Another long tern affect of wireless technology in the social apect is that I believe that as we progress further into the future of wireless technology , more devices will no longer be attached to the internet by a wire or cable. All the around the world hospitals are beginning to establish more machinery that uses wireless technology. This technology can be used for mobile uses for patience. One of the benefits of the use of wireless technology in hospitals or use for at home patient care is the cost effectiveness of the health care delivery (Maglaveras, Koutkais, Meletiadis, Chouvarda, & Balas, 2001). Since the medicine is being used at the house of the patient, it would eliminate any unncecessary patient visits that person would have to make (Maglaveras, Koutkais, Meletiadis, Chouvarda, & Balas, 2001).
A short term effect is that as we progress through time more technology will become linked with wireless. Wirless is very convient and affordable. More people everyday will want to purchase products that are fast and make life easier. We have televisons and DVD devices that uses wireless internet to gives information about a scene in a movie that is being watched. Televisions that allow for the use of streaming from movie sites like Netflix. Giving the person the ability to watch shows and movies at their convience and right in the comfort of their own home. Another short term effect is that people as of right now are not interacting with each other person to person. Everyday we send text messages and video dicussing and sharing our daily activities or problems. Our society has forgotten the importance of personal interaction. The facial expressions, the hand movements, the tone in someones voice; these essential elements can not be deeply conveyed in a text or email.
Conclusion
The United States and other countries around the world have been impacted dramatically by this technology. The uses for wireless seems endless. The fact that this technology is projected to make products become more advance is amazing. Inventors like Marconi probably never would have guess the magnitude of how wireless would impact this world. As I sit and write this paper I could not imagine a life without wireless technology. So many products use it. It has its’ benefits as well. These include the national broadband plan, its contribution to media and the healthcare. The ability to make life resources more convient and easily accessible makes it a greatly appreciated technology. The technology also has its negatives such as health related issues from the electromatic fields that it emits. Also the way it changes people interaction. Like all products you have the choice to use it or not. Even though it may be prevelant, convienent and affordable, we have to make wiser choices. Instead of sitting in your house surfing the web, go outside and read a book. Instead of texting your friends about your day, cook food and invite your friends over for a little get together. Prudent choices have to be made. Wireless Technology is here to stay. It is definitely not a trend, but a substantial technology that will forever remain. I agree with scholars and scientists when they say that wireless technology will become more advanced as we enter more into the future.

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