Negroponte in Madrid
My wife Ana got a free ticket to go see a speech today by none other than Nicolas Negroponte here in Madrid. She was pretty psyched about it and so I didn't try very hard to appropriate the ticket (though it seems I probably could've snuck in, but I didn't feel like taking a huge chunk of my day out to try). I couldn't figure out at first why Ana was so psyched - I mean, I'm a geek so I know who Negroponte is, but why does Ana? I guess he's sufficiently well known to cause a buzz. I hadn't realized... I need to get out more often I think, I'm losing touch with the non-technorati. :-)
I had prepped her a bit this morning about what he may talk about (it's always easier to understand another language if you have some idea of what they are saying first.) Wireless Lillypads and WiFi Flower Boxes, you know, that sort of stuff. And sure enough she just called me and said that I'm now her number one tech guru since he basically talked about what I've been ranting about here for the past several months - the coming wireless revolution - and also about the flower boxes (of course).
Very cool. I feel a bit validated, I don't know why... I know my wife supports my endeavors... I guess it's just because I'm so into this stuff its hard to translate how big it really is. Having a "visionary" like Negroponte come to town and do his schtick really helps show that I'm not a total lunatic. (The key word there being "total").
Not that I actually AGREE with all of Negroponte's utopian predictions, but I do agree that Mesh Networking will be a reality much sooner than later. But in my opinion it won't be able to stand on it's own - there'll always be a need for the reliable back end infrastructure that Telecoms provide - which is where my obsession with smartphones comes in. Though with Nokia announcing support for WiFi in their products, I could be very, very wrong about that. Then again, my toaster isn't hooked up to Internet yet either, so none of our predictions are perfect. ;-)
-Russ