Fully Damned Digital.

After years and years of surfing the net with a 56.6 speed modem (using dial-up service), my household has finally converted to DSL technology. It's no longer necessary for us to accelerate our transmission by disabling high resolution images. While our former way of computing taught us the virtue of patience, I have to say that I will be getting used to this new speed very quickly. Actually, we did have a test trial with DSL when it first became available in the last neighborhood we lived in. This was over four years ago. For a glorious two weeks we rode the cables at high velocity. Within that time I (gulp) downloaded an entire library of new and interesting songs from bands I was hardly familiar with. Those were the days of Napster (cue the old-timey phonographic background music here). Since then I've learned to put my computer to better (and less extralegal) purposes. But we were both astonished by how much more fun the Internet was with DSL.

Unfortunately for us that house soon proceeded to reject DSL service like a sturdy immune system rejects an alien heart. For some reason we couldn't get a consistent connection, and that led to so much frustration that we just gave up. Believe me, it was hard to regress to dial-up. In the ensuing years we've become like dinosuars, plodding our way through cyberspace on cumbersome and atavistic legs. My friends would send me links for streaming audio and then laugh at me when I told them why they need not bother. I had access to faster service at work, but the overzealous filters blocked out a lot of the more interesting material. But now it's "back to the future" again.

We are "cooking with gas" now. A whole entire world has unveiled itself to my prying eyes. And no... I'm not talking about the unsavory stuff you might be suspecting. Keep your mind out of the gutter, friend. No, I'm actually referring to YouTube. I now have virtually instant access to unlimited entertainment. I can see my favorite bands performing on homemade music videos. Whether I'm in the mood to watch the Dancing Outlaw cut the rug or David Cross berate a heckler, I can search for the footage and inevitably I'll find it. Yesterday I decided I wanted to watch an old school breakdancing battle, and within seconds I had multiple options to choose from. But that's not all... in fact, you'd be amazed what those Asian kids are doing nowadays.

And what makes this all possible? How did we get here from those 1980's-era modems that took minutes just to deliver a line of text? It all comes from a 1948 scientific paper by Claude Shannon, which outlined the theory of digital communication. But it wasn't until 1988 that Joe Lechleider of Bellcore decided that wideband digital signals could be carried over conventional twisted pair phone lines. They would simply utilize the bandwidth that already existed above the range of analog voice signals (if you want a more technical explanation- have at it). Thus DSL (the digital subscriber loop) was born. It's just one more incredible tool to make us grateful that we are living in the time we are in. Like it or not, we have landed ourselves smack down in the Information Age.

Of course wireless technology will most likely make DSL obsolete one day. But in this case my usual resistance to being an early adopter won't make me suffer too much. I can't yet imagine what further capabilities I'll need. The Law of Diminishing Returns suggests that I'll be able to do without for awhile.