Wifi
Wifi is a household name and probably responsible for three out of every five calls you get from your parents, but in 2002 it was nowhere near as ubiquitous as it is today, the earliest devices to take advantage of it, including the Apple iBook which in 1999 was the first consumer product to come with wifi built-in, showed us that a future without network cables was a glorious one.
The earliest wifi routers could easily handle a couple of computers surfing the web at the same time, but over the past 20 years wireless routers have been reinvented time and time again to handle an explosion of devices all demanding untethered access to the internet. These days even microwaves, light bulbs, watches, and kid’s toys are dependent on a wireless internet connection to deliver all their promised functionality, and homes are filled with wifi router nodes designed to share the load and demand. Would you even bother booking a hotel room or an Airbnb if wifi wasn’t included?
In the near future, wifi is going to become more than just a convenient way to access the web. Those signals can already be leveraged as a way to track the movements of people in a home or other building, turning wifi signals into invisible security systems, and eventually a way to monitor the health of anyone in range, detecting even a person’s breathing patterns without ever actually having to touch them.
