Perhaps it is fitting that a 50-second video clip of an ear-shattering explosion of 13 shortwave radio antenna towers on the Spanish Costa Brava is getting viewers on the Web site YouTube.
It took 32 pounds, or 14.5 kilograms, of dynamite to fell the massive antennas, which long relayed news from the United States to the former Soviet Union. But the most powerful force behind the demolition was the rapidly shifting landscape of radio, where listeners are migrating toward MP3 players, Internet radio and podcasting.
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Oh great... as our reliance grows on the internet, we demolish the basic working avenues of communications. Does anyone worry about this? I do. I do a LOT. The internet is so fragile and so tenuous and so able to fall prey to loss of power, viruses, whims of local providers (what good is the internet if your local provider goes belly up) that it scares me half silly that we continue to put ALL our eggs in this one basket.
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Is the internet so fragile? The internet travels for the most part over physical wire and optical fiber. The same can be said of our plain old telephone system, which is what I would consider the basic backbone of our communications infrastructure. I don't see this as putting all our eggs in one basket. There are still plenty of ways besides the internet that are used for communication: private networks, AM, FX, tv, cell phones, CB, satellite radio, etc.
Correct. But as we begin to disassmble these other methods of communications, like we have started to do (Shortwave first), then we will have all our eggs in one basket. Besides, telephone/fax/shortwave machines are not subject to malicious viruses and attacks like the internet is (based heavily on software products that are constantly being hacked).
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