Law Students

Some of my earliest telephony recollections were of sitcoms like "The Real McCoy" or "The Andy Griffith Show" where someone is cranking a phone, talking to an operator, and asking to speak to "Mabel". Or even closer to home, my grandmother, wanting to call home to the "old country", and having to call an ATT International operator, give them the name and number of the relative she was trying to contact, and  then sitting anxiously next to the phone for 30 minutes waiting for the call back and the connection to go through. Half of you will have no idea what I am even talking about and the other half (the half that believes Kennedy was a president, not a space center) will think you are having flash backs to a past life.

Now, of course, you are only 10 - 14 digits (depending on if you are calling international) from virtually any person on the planet. Third worlders who may sometimes not have access to running water or electricity on a daily basis, will have a cell number and a Yahoo account. Did you miss that?  Let me say it again slowly. My son knows people in Uganda that only have electricity every other day, may or may not have running water, but have cell phones and can log into a Yahoo account at an Internet cafe.

These kind of reflections usually lead to a nostalgic "we've come a long way baby" or even too an Alvin Toffleresque shock. But where it should lead you is this: To what extent is the information I govern esoteric or public, brokered or distributed? How easy is it for people to connect to my cloud?

In 1909, Guglielmo Marconi calculated that it would take 5.83 radio relay stations to cover the globe. I contend that (the day is soon coming if not already here) if the information someone needs is more than six mouse clicks away, your technology is as antiquated as Mayberry's phone system. ? Chris Saah