Wire-Less
“Wi-Fi” is the correct spelling for the wireless network technology that we’ve come to seek and crave in the 21st century. Neither spelled “wifi” nor “WiFi” nor is it shorthand for “wireless fidelity”, the term was the invention of a branding company and is trademarked at that.
“Bluetooth” is another registered mark for a different wireless technology, and its name pays tribute to a 10th century Danish monarch, King Harald Bluetooth. And that now-omnipresent Bluetooth logo depicts not tiny, jagged teeth, but in fact Scandinavian rune script symbolizing the king’s initials. “Bluetooth was only intended as a placeholder until marketing could come up with something really cool,” according to the official Bluetooth history.
As consumer products, both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth technologies have only existed for the past 20 years. Their birth, growth, and impact wholly reside within this century, untethering our devices from their hubs, yet further tethering humanity to our devices. So expectedly eager for digital connectivity are we that “What’s the Wi-Fi password?” can easily double as a professional ice breaker or an awkward pickup line. In the same way that the Chinese ask “Have you eaten yet?” as a warm, caring greeting, it is now contemporary courtesy to welcome arriving houseguests with our Wi-Fi log-in alongside fresh towels and a glass for water.
Invisible they may be, but squint hard enough, and you can imagine the very wires that Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have erased, languidly lassoing the air all around you. Like long, wispy tentacles of translucent jellyfish, they reach out with primordial focus, ready to sting and stick to your presence should you be within reach. Unplugging from our digital selves means carefully peeling off these tentacles, turning off each and every connected device in our homes from the computer and the television to even the thermostat or the refrigerator. On our smartphones, it means manually switching off the Wi-Fi, the Bluetooth, and the cellular signal — for heaven forbid you actually turn off your phone entirely.
I think about our wireless existence often when I sit by the river these days — my own attempt at unplugging from the realities of the pandemic and from the reach of cyberspace, however temporary. I see goldeneye and bufflehead ducks bobbing about off in the distance, making quick dives underwater to feed or paddling to and fro. They are not looking at their phones and asking around for Wi-Fi passwords. They are ducks.
