May 16, 2002

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  Soundtrack: Live In A Tree (and imagine he’s singing ‘blog in a tree.’) Yes, it’s an apple tree, and yes, I’m using a Macintosh.

  
  
  A Few Hours Later
  
  I thought I’d update this entry to reflect the amount of technology required to sit in a tree and use the internet as if it were a portable radio.
  
  Firstly, the AT&T broadband internet connection. Substitute a phone-line modem if you want. This connection gives an IP address to a Siemens SpeedStream firewall/router/switch, so I can share the connection with my housemates. The router in turn gives an IP address to an Apple AirPort base station. The base station communicates with a little card called AirPort inside my Apple iBook, which is running Mac OS X 10.1.4. The AirPort card/base combo allows my iBook to stay hooked to the network within a few hundred feet of the base, with no wires at all. I’ve opted to use OmniWeb instead of that web browser from another famous Seattle-area company, because it’s just plain better.
  
  So, in order for me to sit in a tree, there’s somewhere close to $2200 in hardware alone, and countless man-hours of effort on the part of everyone who made all the hardware and software. Those people, the designers, the manufacturers, the coders, the laborers… they’re all over the globe. Some live in poverty while others are extremely wealthy. They’re fighting a war over globalization (for or against), they’re trying to organize, they’re trying to keep costs down, they’re trying to take the market.
  
  All so I can sit in a tree.
  
  And that doesn’t include the pruning saw.

  • 7:16 pm
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