Word: modem
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What it boils down to is this. Netizens are sick of the World Wide Wait. We know the Internet isn't living up to its potential. Most of us would junk our 56K modems in a Palo Alto minute for a viable, affordable high-speed link to our home. But which pipe will we choose? Cable? Telephone? Wireless? Satellite? No one knows for sure, and Microsoft and AOL--both of whose businesses depend on the answer--are at pains to appear neutral in the coming shakeout. "We're pipe agnostic," says Microsoft vice president Brad Chase. Which actually means they...
...hands. Internet power America Online, software supremo Microsoft, telecom giant MCI Worldcom and cable's Comcast (which made the initial $48 billion bid for MediaOne that AT&T overwhelmed) all huddled at various times because each had something to lose. AOL, for instance, could find its access to cable-modem customers blocked and its booming online-content business threatened...
...Programmer Ward Christensen writes MODEM (modulator-demodulator), allowing PCs to talk over public phone lines...
...what, you say? Everybody knows that with a mouse, a modem and access to the Internet, these days you can point-and-click anywhere on the planet, unencumbered by time or space or long-distance phone tariffs...
Along the way, vital components began to shrink: the vacuum tube became the transistor; the transistor led to the microchip; the microchip married the phone and gave birth to the modem. Soon enough, sounds, photos, movies and conversations would be ground down into the smallest components of all: 1s and 0s. Was the digital revolution inevitable? In our brave new wired world, it certainly seems that...