May 20, 2020
An On-Line Publication of the Anonymous Anything Society
“5G” IS GOING TO BE EXPENSIVE
Imagine competing with a gaggle of self-driving (autonomous) vehicles
every time you take the family anywhere, having your appendix removed by
remote control, done by a famous surgeon in Hamburg, Germany, driving cross
country in an electric luxury car that costs virtually nothing to maintain,
and downloading a streaming film in just a few seconds.
Connectivity to more things than you can imagine is available today
to a handful of people in a half-dozen metropolitan areas.
I am communicating weekly with a dozen “gurus” who offer
downloadable “books” about the speed and the economy of the “5G”
Internet of things; mostly how to become wealthy once the unholy cost
of COVID-19 is quelled and we subscribe to one of their “how-to” books
guaranteeing, for a price, that each will make you a magician on Wall Street
in the approaching decade.
The thing that overshadows all of this is the overwhelming cost of
developing a vaccine, but that is going to take time, probably a year and
tons of money.
There is another cost to this “5G” world: Many, many, more cellular
towers in every neighborhood and the cost of building and lofting scores of
low-earth-orbiting satellites, necessary to make “5G” function properly
There is this and more, beginning with the cost of a new “5G”
cellphone. Sorry, the present smart phones are not smart enough.
There is this about technology. It takes place almost immediately in
a greatly compressed time frame.
-Phil Richardson, Storyteller and Observer of the
Human Condition. Our unending thanks to Jim
Bromley, who programs our Archive
of Prior Commentaries