I spent last week without internet access. The office where I was working only had closed network access, Bluetooth on my laptop has failed so I couldn’t use my mobile as a GPRS modem, the hotel where I was staying had no connection, and when I tried to used a local WiFi hotspot my credit card was rejected.
I was interested to read in The Economist about American municipalities’ dream to Cover their cities with WiFi (subscription required) using mesh architectures.
The current generation of (Western) teenagers is the first who have never lived without the World Wide Web. It is as unthinkable to them as a world without television is to the generation before them or a world without telephones to the generation before that.
As this generation grow older and attains positions of power and influence, I expect we will see many more examples of initiative to provide universal access.
(This entry posted using a GPRS connection while travelling on a high-speed train in a foreign country. And I fully expect it to “just work”. Welcome to the Internet generation.)