Chapter 1 Introduction

1. The Beauty of Wires, the Inevitability of Wireless

The first gem of wisdom I ever acquired about consulting, obtained many years ago from a former schoolmate, was to ensure that everything is plugged in: no continuity, no data. Wires carry voltages and currents from one place to another. Their behavior is reasonably simple and predictable—at least for sufficiently low data rates and short lengths—and they can be seen, grabbed, traced, and tugged.

Wires are also an irritating and sometimes intolerable umbilical cord to the mother network. Look behind a typical personal computer or engineering workstation: you’ll be hard put to find which plug goes with which cable. One person in a café with a laptop plugged into an ...

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