Mainstream Cellular Phones

So who remembers what a "telephone" is? Not just that wireless thing hanging from your kitchen wall. I'm talking old school turn dial phones. Well, I would understand for the kids of today to have little or no recollection of such a futile tool. It was the thing of the past. Who needs those when everyone is carrying around a cell phone. It is personal, light, and useful for more than just calls anymore. So how much has the telephone evolved since the old turn dials? Let us look at just a few of the advancements that phones have had over the years.

One the greatest differences that can be made about cell phones and telephones is the literal fact that telephones run via telephone wiring and now fiber-optics along cable lines. Cell phones are run via satellites sending signals from one phone to the other. The use of satellites over cable and phone lines is the fact that it travels faster and without any cords of wires. It can get reception from just about anywhere and can be used at any time. As far as fiber optics has come for sending information, it doesn't beat the waves used in cell phones.

Another large difference in the old home phone and the cell phones is the portability. Before, when you had to talk gossip with your best friend on the phone, you would have to take the phone cord, pull it all the way to the bathroom and lock yourself in to keep from others to listen. With cell phones, you can take it outside, upstairs, in the car, in a tree, etc. Also, even when they created portable phones in the 80's, they were large and clunky. Now they are sleek enough to fit in a wallet.

The cell phones have come up with other numerous ways to just simply communicate. Not only can you just talk into the phone, but you can have speaker phone, walkie-talkie mode (where everything is voice activated), text messages, AIM connections, etc. If you thought saying words was hard, there are now other ways of "speaking".

With the advancement of memory, cell phones have features never dreamed of by older phones: Cameras, music, games, AIM, Internet, and other fun little bells and whistles. The phones started putting in the little things like the planner with calendar, the calculator, the stop watch, etc into its entourage. Then they slowly added innovations like music downloads, an Internet connection, and music that takes their importance and shoots it through the roof. Now there is no need for any other electronic, it is all on your paper thin 1 by 2 inch phone. You don't need anything else.

One last thing I can mention that makes cell phones so great is the fact that they are cheap! I mean whne I can see a hobo on the greyhound buses using a cell phone, then you know that it is accessable to anyone and everyone. In which it should....except not to hobos....

Resources: RazorTurn Dial Phone

Energy Concerns

As technology advances, the need to power that technology increases. This is becoming more concerning as we're running out of our chief energy resource: oil.

Now, of course, it's not possible to for any energy source to last forever. Delta S > 0. Even the stars will die. But, hey, a billion year fix is better than a hundred year one.

So, what other options are there? What will keep our technological society chugging along?

Well, there's ethanol.The idea makes sense. By far, the best solar cells known to man are contained in plants. Chlorophyll converts the energy of sunlight into the more storable and transportable form of sugar. Then we can process that sugar and make fuel we can run our cars off of. The problem is, raising crops isn't that easy, and requires us to put our own energy into it, in the form of fertilizers, harvesters, etc. That's true of any means of acquiring energy, but in this case, we put in more than we get out. Ethanol isn't feasible as an energy source even on a short term basis.

There's coal and natural gas. There's still plenty of that left, at least compared to oil. But that's hard to get out of the ground, and it's horribly polluting.

And then there's the nuclear option. Although nuclear power plants have their dangers, most of them are exaggerated. While there is the possibility of a meltdown, modern nuclear power plants are extremely well shielded. You wouldn't be exposed to significantly more radiation standing right outside of a nuclear power plant that was melting down than you would anywhere else. And nuclear power plants are well protected against external threats as well.



The only real concern about nuclear fission is the waste. Radioactive waste will stay radioactive for millions of years. What do you do with it? Right now, our best solution is to bury it deep under mountains. But that's not terribly secure. I haven't seen these ideas anywhere else, and they're probably not feasible, but the best I can think of is to either bury them deep under a subduction zone or launch it into space.

But anything we do now, is really just tiding us over until we can harness the power of the sun directly, either with extremely high efficiency solar panels, or fusion power plants.