This post continues my previous post about the remarkably important forecasts in the foreword to Vern Fotheringham and Chetan Sharma’s new book Wireless Broadband: Conflict and Convergence. Its foreword is by Mark Anderson, CEO of Strategic News Service, who is known for his ability to predict trends into the future. In the following two brief paragraphs, Anderson hits two education nails on the head: mobility and equalization. Education will not be able to go merrily along the analog path into the future while these powerful forces change everything else:
As though the global trends named here were not sufficient drivers to warrant attention to wireless broadband, there is another, equally compelling set of accelerants, all coming under the umbrella title of mobility. On every level, from lifelong residence to lifestyle to work, humans are becoming more mobile by the decade, and wireline bandwidth, while growing, is increasingly not appropriate to our needs. Cars today have more computers in them than houses, but get a small fraction of the comparative bandwidth. That will change.
Finally, it is worth noting that wireless bandwidth will be the Great Equalizer of this century, providing citizens and countries equal access to the world’s information and commerce. Countries which, like China (yet to move to 3G), choose to put politics ahead of this trend, will become case examples of what not to do, while those such as India which push aggressively for wireless bandwidth will be emulated worldwide, for the hope and prosperity which this form of being connected can bring.
