Carrier pigeon, Telegraph, Switched telephone network, Cellular. It is only a simple progression of our ability to talk to each other, but we may be (finally) close to the rise of a fifth infrastructure. The combination of software advances, internet access and wireless Ethernet makes voice over IP (VoIP) a natural. One hobbyist wants to see it happen so badly he has even built a phone for just that purpose. I can see the attraction. WiFi gives us the convenience of a cellular phone, without anyone owning the technology. The Internet provides a network to use to move our messages around. The use of commodity hardware and software makes it scalable and adaptable to change.

It is kind of like our highway and road system. No cost to use the road, you just have to buy a car (phone) and pay for gas (ISP). I like seeing common infrastructure supporting activities like driving or talking to be made available to everyone at no direct cost. It lowers the barriers to innovation because small endeavors don't have to deal with the overhead. If you are big and have the money, you can fly or get yourself a PBX and T1, but us little guys just want the freedom of the open dial tone. It would also please me to get rid of all these monopolistic Baby Bells and annoying Long Distance Companies. Unfortunately, they seem to be catching on and are trying to corner the market for providing internet access. I guess they are big oil (big data) in my model. Hmmm, maybe I'll try and pick a less ominous analogy next time.