Get Blogged @ Cybergate9.Net

A ‘revolution’ is loosely defined (skimming over the variety of definitions quoted at Wikipedia) as action(s) which result in socio-political change. Or, less specifically, by Cambridge’s Advanced Learners Dictionary, as “a very important change in the way that people do things”…

An ‘evolution’ is, again loosely, generally agreed to mean change or process, often with an implication of ‘forward movement’ (e.g. in biological systems - becoming more complex). References for further exploration at wiktionary or wikipedia.

Out of interest a ‘volution’ is quoted (by Websters thru the Online Medical Dictionary) as having several meanings including: a spiral turn, or a wreath, or the whorl of a spiral shell - and apparently derived from the latin ‘volutio’. Not dissimilarly, both evolution and revolution have their roots in latin: the former from ‘evolutio‘ (an unrolling, unfolding), and the latter from ‘revolvere‘ (to revolve).

So my intent by using R:E:volution is combinational then. By definition - ‘a turn’, ‘a change’, and/or ‘a forward movement’. By inference - the subtlety of the implied ‘meanings’ of using words such as revolution and evolution in combination. By construct - the use of the colon in punctuation to point out that - “what follows clarifies, explains, or simply enumerates elements of what is referred to before”…

And the, on ‘the face of it’, wandering introduction, itself, serves to place the appropriate amount of emphasis on the uncertainty, the wonder, and the spirit of enquiry which my rhetorical, questioning, title presents. But I will be clear at the outset - I have no intention of answering ‘the question’ - only to research, propose, learn, and ask further questions by discussing it…

‘Onward…’ agreed the journeyman and the apprentice…

The Internet is certainly an evolution of technology. With more complexity, in some respects one might argue, than is possible with the evolution of biological systems. Whilst in biological evolution a view of an hierarchical tree can be drawn - it is unlikely you will see cross connection between the branches, in my understanding.

In technological evolution however the opposite seems to be true. Using the ‘parlance of our times’ - ‘technological convergence’ is a reasonable example. Much work over the last decades has taken place to enable computers to become TVs, stereos, radios and the like. We are all aware that many electrical devices we now own - which previously had some other controller system in them - are now, too, controlled by ‘embedded computers’. This is largely due to the cross-pollination of ‘the branches’ of modern technologies. This is also true in other fields of scientific endeavour apart from technology - but that would be too larger digression…

Often, with technology, entire branches get removed in favour of some superior, latterly arrived, technology. A simple example of this is the telephone - primarily designed as a circuit-switched system which has, by now in my estimation at its base, been almost entirely replaced by a later technology - packet-switching. This is a good example of this type of cross-pollination so let’s stay with it for a moment…

It is true that the original concept (in this case circuit-switching for telephones) is somehow ‘evolved’ to work in the new system. So, in that sense, the ‘old technology’, or ‘old concepts’ more accurately, are not supplanted - they are ‘kind of re-emulated’ in the new physical/electrical system. But, the old technology, in the sense of having to make a physical wire, circuit-switched connection, between two telephone handsets has entirely disappeared… removing the entire ‘original branch’ version of that technology begun by Antonio Meucci (exactly whom, is under constant dispute) and others in the 1800’s…

What we have today is largely a massively hybrid system of physical lines (in the minority), computers, sub-marine fibre cables, satellites, microwave links etc etc which packet-switch data all over the world - including millions of telephone calls. To be sure that is too simplistic a view. There will still be large amounts of infrastructure dedicated to telephony - this ensures its ‘quality of service’ which we have all come to expect - but my guess is the bulk of ‘the back-end’ is based on modern, computer controlled, packet-switched technology.

Ultimately its relatively easy to envisage that they (the millions/billions of phone calls) will just ‘merge’ as ‘yet more’ packet-switched ‘data’ into the ’single global network’ - which at this point doesn’t really exist - but, in any event is, in myth, currently called the the Internet.

Anybody who has experienced Voice Over the (real, todays…) Internet (VOIP) will attest to its imperfect nature… so, we are, at least, a little way from that ’single global converged network’… This is part, though, of the ‘natural’ technological evolution to which I allude. Ultimately there will not be a ‘phone system’, per se.

‘Telephonics’, as my dear Uncle Eric so precisely puts it, will be just another ’service’ on the future ‘global Internet’…

In this sense then, we are discussing technology evolution, a slow change, traceable from the 1800’s until now…

Until the next R:E:volution…

Photos:
‘Spiral‘ by Roger Smith.
‘Old Telephone‘ by Bergius.