The Telecom Quartet
Folio IV: Hello, Hello, Good Morning,
Future! A call to 2030.
Few poets have played with the idea
of imagining the future readers of their work and in this way; they have to
invent a part of future also. Some have thought about hundred years, some fifty
and some less ambitious ones but not necessarily the less gifted ones chose
lesser volume of time to imagine upon. In 2005, I write a letter, having
imagined that you would be ratifying my assumption of myself being as one of
your team. The letter, a piece of telecom imagination is addressed to my five
month old son and since he is allowed to pass judgment only after twenty five
years, we all are sufficiently safe. In this risky business of imagination, I
remain indebted to many of our colleagues who have either kindled or restrained
my flight of fancy. In another way of fancy, if soldiers can be called as
warrior-poet, we can also be called as poets
of connection, albeit in a limited sense but nevertheless an important one
as we all know Connection is an
experience.
My dear son,
I
write this to you, today and as per the design of this, you are supposed to see
this after quarter a century. A long time to go perhaps, perhaps not. Unless
some man-made catastrophe of most stupid kind overtakes our destiny, you will
be pleased to find that you remain part of a tradition that was long, longer
than you may think and endures longer. Stepping on the last step of our
present, I am venturing to imagine what you would find then, especially in the
world of poets of connection -i.e. the communication engineers of this
generation. As you may have the chance to laugh at the conservatism of my
imagination or wild sway of it, may I remind you a profound saying from a
historian who has provided me with this sentence and that is my defense as well
It is always worthwhile to remind
ourselves that the most ancient events of the past, was, once upon a time a
matter of future for the people who made and unmade them.
Your generation will find the
Connection Experience different in form but fundamentally same. Like we had a
telephone, a mobile, a PC, a television for voice, voice in motion, data, video
respectively as separate, you would have options of most flexible type and
would find it something strange for this kind of separate devices.
You may as well find that there are
devices that can be hardwired into your body as a personal communication tool, having
the option of powered by sunlight and in
this way, every human being may be assigned a Universal access contact, secured
by his or her genetic codes. But this may be little risky business for
non-technological reasons and may be a matter of great debate.
In another shift as a different mode
of communication altogether, one may be able to afford some gadget where smells
can be transported. You may talk with a girl over a gadget, see her as well as
smell the lavender emanating from her chin and vice versa. I would recommend Ta-ho for you if the perfume is
available still. I also add that sniffer dogs would be unnecessary for
detection of crime, a facet of civilization itself and would remain as long as
civilization remains.
In your college and school you will
learn about the history of Internet although it would be unthinkable for you to
believe that speeds like 2 Mb/ sec was used to be called as broadband! Have
your laugh. I also had my laugh when I was told that 64k was considered as high
speed data transmission. However, you will find more and more optical based
gadgets because Internet was designed in view of scarcity of bandwidth and in
your time, bandwidth will be abundant as air and the present Internet
architecture would change into reflectors, reflecting light from one point to
another.
I will tell you one story I recently
heard There was an old man who died in a train accident, here in
In your generation, as the trends
show, surveillance and counter surveillance business will be a major business
as we find the virus and anti-virus business. In your case, due to converging
of so many communication channels, the issue will be a more perplexing one. The
debate over this issue will seem very novel for your generation perhaps but is
a re-enactment of the very old one individual liberty and social
obligations. Individual
There will be another career
metamorphosis for communication engineers and that will be equivalent of
designer drugs. There will be so many options and so many things to choose that
there will emerge, like marriage for love consultants today to design
communication paraphernalia for individual and corporate and these engineers
will be more like designers or architects. They will fare great I think.
Another divergence will be in the legal
arena. Laws would be complex and hence would require huge amount of work to
legislate and enforce them. We faced the problem of cyber crime and your
generation would find it in a more complex way, if more and more activities of
your civilization become network-centric.
I dont think Transportation will be
a reality and even it is, I am doubtful about its
enjoying the economies of scale by then. The whole art and science of
communication depends on the fact that we are separated by space.
Transportation would solve the problem of separation in space. Why call when
you can be there? But in that case, we need to build new network architecture
perhaps. This also depends on the type of transportation technology is being
developed. In that far future, Communication Engineers would become
Transportation Engineers. Connecting voice, data and video, they would
transmit/receive individuals! But another practical issue is involved we
might choose to talk only and may not like to go there. This leaves room for
telecom networks and allied functions.
On behalf of all of us, we wish that
your generation would take our profession to new heights and in dealing with more
complex issues, you will not only enrich yourself but the
tradition of which we are also a part.
Dealing with future is surest way to
make a fool of oneself. So I would stop. But as long as there is something called
human beings in the planet, they would like to communicate and as long as urge to
communicate exist, the tradition exists. With this solemn hope, I close this and
with best wishes to a future and a hello quarter century old.
Best wishes,
From and on behalf of a tradition,
Your loving father.
Post-script:
The Telecom Quartet formally closes in
the fourth Folio. The next time you make a telephone call or send an email, you
may care to consider that behind all the machines, there is a palpable presence
of human beings and their aspiration that make Connection an experience. I happened
to see a old mast ship called Glenlee, tucked nicely in the Clydeside harbour at
For any comment or feedback, you can
mail me here at wordsmith