Kevin Mossing
Period 2
21st Century

A Change to the World

Today, was told to talk about what ways mobile technology has been changing our society, or what are the implications of increasingly widespread use of social media. But really they are both the same thing. Mobile technology has been the main thing that has helped increase widespread use of social media. So then the real question you should be asking is, what has mobile technology been doing to change our society?

Mobile technology has been around the world since the early days of the 2nd World War for the use of radio telephony links and civil services to assist ships to contact the shore. Mobile phones have had the ability to access data networks such as the Internet for a long time, but it was not until the widespread availability of good quality 3G coverage in the mid 2000s that custom devices appeared to access the mobile internet too.

These devices became especially popular for use with laptops due to the added portability they have. Some computer manufacturers had actually started to embed the mobile data function right into the laptop so a MiFi Network wasn't needed, instead the SIM card could be inserted straight into the Mobile Phone or Laptop itself to access the mobile data service. The 3G-capable laptops became commonly known as "netbooks". By the start of 2010, E-readers such as the Amazon Kindle and the Nook, had already become available with embedded wireless internet. The Apple Computer had announced plans for embedded wireless internet on its iPad tablet devices beginning this fall.

By 2009, it became clear that at some point, 3G networks would be overwhelmed by the growth of bandwidth-intensive applications like streaming media. So the industry began looking to data-optimized 4th-generation technologies, with their promise to speed improvements up to 10-fold over existing 3G technologies. One of the main ways that 4G is different technologically from 3G was in its elimination of circuit switching, 4G then took in a treatment of voice calls just like any other type of audio media.

Basically what I am trying to get at is that mobile technology is the sole reason social media is getting exposed so widespread. But is this really something to worry about? Well that’s for you to think about, but for me, I believe it’s only making us stronger.