The next 20 years will deliver an explosion of tiny computers and digital bandwidth, serving up information that will turn every market global and instantaneous and every industry on its rear end.
The smart map displays a visual representation of the home network and all of the connected devices to give users valuable information about network connectivity and current bandwidth usage so they can easily resolve any possible connectivity issues and get the most out of their home network.
Requests for information usually come in short bursts and require far less bandwidth than the video or data that flows back to the computer requesting the information.
Mobile devices suddenly became content rich, with access to more information on the go, albeit limited by bandwidth and phone web browser capabilities.
That's not the sirens' fault -- a mind-numbingly loud "whoop whoop" really doesn't have the bandwidth to reveal that kind of information to the human ear -- but now that SMS-capable phones are ubiquitous, it's time to smarten things up just a tad.
And, because the digital signal occupies only 65% of the excess allotted bandwidth, stations can use the leftover spectrum to transmit text information like the artist's name, song title or more advertising.
But on Abilene, information travels through a few hundred extremely large rivers in the form of high-bandwidth applications and complex academic systems.