Of Wireless Bling Bling in American Society
Joseph Oriko
Expository Writing
High School Senior Paper
Dec, 12th 2005.
To my brother Woordy
Donny Switalski, a high school senior, never spends a day without communicating with his friends and family. During most of the communication Donny calls or text messages through his cell phone. At times when doing homework on his laptop computer, he simply instant messages his friends to get replies in a second, and when he is bored he easily downloads games and music through his cell phone for entertainment. Mrs. Gayle Bowman a librarian also corresponds often with co-workers and family. At work she receives memos from a portable Apple computer. At home she has a cell phone with a family plan from her service provider that links and helps keep tabs of her family by a touch of a dial. These and other hundreds of millions of Americans daily use wireless technology conveniently for communication, comfort, and entertainment. This convenience has spurred a change in culture and ultimately a new breed of a self reliant society. The change in wireless information access in the United States for the past two decades to present time has influenced the American culture conveniently: steering the demand for wireless devices, influencing the economic growth and market structure for sales, and commanding new areas of development in wireless technology.
Just like Donny and Mrs. Bowman, people everywhere in America are using wireless technology tremendously. Before wireless tech was viewed as a status symbol but today it is as necessary as communication can be. Gone are the days when people only used land line phones and pay phones for communication. In today’s world however to own a communication device is very common to everybody from kids and teenagers to adults and the elderly. Besides keeping communications, cell phones also serve as alarm clocks and watches. They list and show video, movies, text messages from friends, and latest sports scores (Wood 13). Teenagers’ use of cell phones clearly show why wireless technology is becoming popular; part of the use by teenagers is the need to remain a player in the peer-to-peer communication game. The other is to stay trendy with fads and styles. For instance, for use as fashion accessory or in collecting musical "ring tones." These distinctive mini songs that users stockpile to allow them to identify individual callers are a demand that has generated a billion-dollar industry by listening to pop singers. Pop singer such as P Diddy, who won a music award recently for best ring tone, also has many popular songs with fashionable downloads (15).
Popularity in wireless technology is also in the growing uses for video games. Many people in American society play video games everyday. Picture yourself waiting in an office lobby for a doctor’s appointment or at a staff lunch break in your work place, the next possible thing to do from boredom is play games on your cell phone or a laptop with internet access. That industry itself is now at about $100 million in annual sales and expected to double by next year (16).
Wireless technology continues to have a convenience change and influence to the individual consumer. As a communication device in an advanced world, almost all cell phones now come with built in internet access, thanks to wireless technology. Presently cell phones are used for more purposes than just talking. They are also being used as tracking devices for individuals in a family, private companies, law enforcement and government agencies. State transportation agencies, including those in Maryland and Virginia are monitoring traffic by tracking cell phone signals and mapping them against road grids (Riehtel 1). These help in reducing gridlock clusters thus making safer transportation. The Black Berry 7520 cellular phone from Nextel with GPS Road Safety RS- 1000 is also used a tracking device (Tynan 3). This spy gadget can help you track down your rough teenage daughter when she leaves home without your knowledge or your two-year old son at the park.
The American culture seems to always fall in love with what is easier to use and better in cost efficiency. From colored TVs to the internet search, this trend is now present in wireless technology. Dating services previously limited to post mail, land line phones, and internet is now cordially done on cell phones. It only makes sense that such interactions as dating should be done on an instant to get choice and make a decision without waiting. An interaction of that speed gives you profile, picture, voice, and ultimately video to make choice and “next” who needs to be removed from your dating interest. Upoc Network of New York is one of the many companies who provide cell phone dating services; it very recently introduced its first dating service with 25,000 subscribers at $4.99 a week. Like all other cell phone dating service providers, it is possible for users to upload short profiles and use a variety of criteria to search for matches through their cell phones (Rhodes 1). Another idea of checking your e-mail through your cell phone is also popular with most cell phone users. Microsoft and Palm just took it one step farther by producing Treo smart mobile-email phone that easily accesses folders for Microsoft windows mail and all other mail for the consumer (Wahl 6).
The use of wireless devices in the American society continues to built a new bread of a modernized culture which is both characterized by a fast paced outlook on living as well as an efficient and better search cost of information. Whether in public transportation, restaurants, social gatherings, and field events, people use wireless technology in one way or the other. At this very moment while you are reading this someone in America needs to call his grand mother to find out how she is doing, another needs to ask her father what kind of meat to buy from the grocery store to be barbequed for the TV show tonight, while another needs to call her fiancé to tell him she is running ten minutes late to tea at the café. It has become so common that it is interesting just picking up a mate at your local store while they are talking on a cell phone. They would be so caught up with it not necessarily to listen to the other person on the line but actually to avoid you from your looks. If you look great they would simply tell the other person to hold on, put the call on hold, and then talk to you. If you do not seem attractive to them, they would simply raise one finger at you so to say the call is important and move on with their busy lives (Gebhardt 3). At school and at work it is so common that such debates as letting people use their cell phones are widely debated (Leland 1). Yet wireless devices may seem to be an influential to the individual user but corporations and businesses depend entirely on them to survive.
Corporations and businesses use wireless devices for video conferences, teleconferences, interviews, outside the office memos, data movements, photocopy exchanges, communications, and transactions. Most corporations now have conferences wirelessly from anywhere. The conferences link board members or field workers. The global interaction has also made it possibly for American corporations to wirelessly connect to the rest of the world for business agendas (Barner 4). Offices in the United States also freely send faxes and email memos wirelessly from one office’s portable computer or the manager’s PDA to another office’s in the city, coast to coast, or oversees. At the banks most things are now done on the computer that before seemed impossible to do. Anybody with a bank account today can check their accounts, pay bills, moved money from one account to another, and even withdraw money from their portable wireless computers. Most offices and business today also operate through wireless communication. A clothing label or fashion designer company may have drawers in Los Angels, analysts in Atlanta, and managers in New York City moving around trying to figure out what costumers consider fashion. Wireless communication makes it possible for their business to be effective: Analyst in Atlanta tells drawers what is attractive by the word on the streets; drawers draw and send drawings to managers who order the clothes to be shipped from overseas. NASDAQ and other over the counter stock exchanges are done through computer systems around stock markets in the United States. Stock buyers can read the buying and selling of their company shares wirelessly from anywhere thus letting them make informed financial decisions.
Wireless demand in education is also both financially effective and time efficient. While some students may be considered visual learners and others as ‘text’ learners or non visual learners, the use of computers in education has surely developed American education system. It has only come to be easier to quickly move class-typed work from school to home and vice verse; school work is also easier fro the student at campus to move and take notes from one class to another. Most college preps, colleges, and universities now require or provide their students with laptop computers. "Everybody in the community talks with each other more frequently," says David Brown, a professor at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. "Students run into trouble, they e-mail one another, e-mail the faculty. The whole culture changes." Most students in the United States today from elementary school to graduate level interact with their classmates on the computer effortlessly. Such tools and websites such as American Online Instant Massager, Facebook.com, Myspace.com, school e-mails, and networks promote study groups and socialization in American education system and ultimately the American culture. Lee Torda, an English professor at Bridgewater State College, says at first she was concerned that her English classes would become so bogged down by technology that mastering fonts would take precedence over mastering grammar. But she came to appreciate its uniting factor. "Technology is cultural capital," she says (Miller 9 and 14).
Wireless communication in American culture even goes to Monday Night Football. The Eagles are playing the Colts on the last play-off game to the Super Bowl, it is fourth and ten and the sleety snow heavily pours down. The Quarterback must make a crucial play at this point. He blocks his ears and twitches his neck as though he’s looking to make the play. Hundreds of Millions of fans watching the game rely on that touchdown, the good thing is that to make the play for the touchdown, a play was drawn by someone upstairs on the viewing-room and relayed via a wireless device to the quarterback who has a headphone on his ears and listens to the instructions, decides, and make the plays. That occurs all the time in NFL, NASCAR, and other American outdoor sports. The rankings of college football through BCS involve computers, reporters, critics, and coaches who also communicate often wirelessly during the season to help rank the college teams.
So why do we still need wireless communications in the United States? Given the needs illustrated above, Americans rely on wireless communication, its very essential in contacting and the general use. Cells phone companies that provide services such as Sprint and Nokia have come up with many ways to provide customers with better services (Cauley 5). They reach their customers through advertising and better user friendly gargets (Motorola). Trends show that the use of communication devices will never really end in the United States but increase as time overtime, a good indication of customer satisfaction (Arthur 6).
A new way of wirelessly connecting to the internet has also come to effect. That is through WiFi (Segan 1). State Legislatures passed a law to let this happen in location that can make it possible for users. Through WiFi you can get internet access through your lap top or any other portable device (State Legislatures). Business such has McDonald have even made WiFi possible in some locations so that when you eat your burger you can easily brows the web (Liddle 10). VoIP (“Voice over IP”) is also another way to make wireless communication easier for the American user. Through VoIP your computer is your internet connection without having to dial up. Through the same computer cable comes the same television cable you use to watch the channel and a faster, cheaper, and data reliable way in communication (Maxon). Due to its advantages, this is even considered enough to cut land line phone usage (Wendland 4).
So why do you still need to stay wireless? Well according to Motorola development engineer Eliud Omollo, the use of wireless technology in the United States is only getting better. More and more people continue to use wireless and wireless provider’s annual budget show dramatic revenues year by year (Verizon Corp). The future of wireless communication can only grow hotter is the current usage (Valenzuela 3).
The future of wireless communication is bound to be very interactive and extremely user friendly. “In a few years to come your cell phone will communicate with your garage door, your home music system, your refrigerator, your cooker, and even your bath tab to warm water!” says Engineer Omollo. Wireless communication has come from far to the current present and it’s now shooting to the future. It is fast, it is growing, it is interactive, and most of all it make your work easier cutting down the cost and time that you greatly value.
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