So now the 'Dotte is REALLY going to be hot...or is it?

For all two or three of you out there who don't know by now,  Google has chosen Kansas City, Kansas as the initial rollout location for its greatest-thing-since-sliced-bread gigabit network.  Yes, that's right-gigabit.  As in one billion bits.  As in a 1 with nine zeroes behind it.  As in download a whole DVD in maybe 40 seconds to a minute.  Cool.  Too bad, though, that it'll take years for wireless networking speeds to catch up to where they can take full advantage of a backhaul that fast.  Right now the best state-of-the-art Wi-Fi equipment would have trouble carrying anything more than about 150 megabits per second, and then only under ideal conditions. 

But who's complaining?  Give me a gigabit right now and I'll gladly saw it into tenths and share it with nine other users, especially for free-which is the price Google plans to charge for nonprofit use (read libraries).  One can only hope that being hooked into the most 21st-century of networks will alleviate the rampant epidemic of 20th-century thinking among so many people that has made eastern Wyandotte County such a digital backwater-and has kept its public libraries in particular from doing nearly as much as they ought to be doing to remedy that.

In short, there'll be plenty of news of interest here emanating from between the viaduct and the speedway over maybe the next 18 to 24 months.  Stay tuned.