Humor by John Christmann
I Pass, Version 6
As if the mortgage crisis weren’t bad enough, I now learn that we are about to run out of Internet addresses. This means that my new electronic toaster may soon be homeless.
It seems there are over four billion Internet addresses available to connect junk to the Internet, junk like computers and smart phones and Lindsay Lohan ankle bracelets. These addresses, called Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, are a bunch of incomprehensible numbers separated by dots that are primarily used to keep Cisco stock prices up.
The liberal allocation of IP addresses has enabled such important concepts as “cloud computing” which is a euphemism to explain something we are not supposed to understand.
Misunderstood technology used to be referred to as a “black box”. But now there are so many black boxes, I guess we need a cloud to hide them all.
An Internet address simply ensures what goes into the cloud gets to the right place. Which explains why I get so much junk email.
To date, IP addresses have been willy-nilly assigned to any machine with a blinking light and a computer chip that connects to the Internet. The addresses are also doled out to multiple dwelling units that house such prominent family domain names as Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Dadinthebox.
For a while things were fine. But then millions of people wanted to access Dadinthebox from their cell phones and program toasters from their cars. And so more and more addresses were doled out until—poof, the device you seek is currently unavailable—all four billion have gone.
I know what you are thinking: four billion IP addresses seems like a lot. But it isn’t. I probably carry two billion devices in my pockets alone. Multiply that by the number of people in the world and you can easily see why we need calculators to do multiplication.
And without enough Internet addresses we will never be able to access these calculators from the car to fully understand how many more addresses we really need.
The good news is that a new routing system is being introduced called IPv6. IPv6 is an acronym that stands for something that seems important, but isn’t. Kind of like Network TV. What is vital is that the new addressing scheme will support something like a gazillion jillion addresses, enough to ensure each of our children has access to the billions of toasters expected to be online at Google by the time they are in college.
I don’t know why they couldn’t have put a V8 in IPv6 so that we could also connect with every sub-atomic particle in the universe, but I suppose this is why I will never be enlightened.
For those of you conspiracy theorists who believe IPv6 is really just Y2k in a different order, you are probably right. Ultimately it may be an expensive yawn to implement.
Certainly letting loose this many Internet addresses raises real privacy concerns. It is one thing to surreptitiously collect my social security number, it is quite another to steal the identity of my toaster. I for one don’t want my bread to be browned against my wishes by a George Foreman Grill somewhere in Belarus.
As someone who has devoted his entire life to fixing technology problems just to survive in a world encumbered with technology, I can say I am not happy about this.
I remember when the rapid proliferation of cell phones threatened the availability of telephone numbers. The solution to this problem was relatively simple: make the cell phone buttons smaller.
So if you ask me, there is a simple solution to this problem too, a solution which incorporates two natural elements we take for granted everyday: gravity and second floor windows.
Earth Day is coming up soon. This offers an excellent opportunity to forcefully unite the abundance of Internet technology with the ground, freeing up address space in the ubiquitous network cloud for useful things like sunshine and The Farmers Almanac.
Of course just because I take this position does not mean I am some sort of cranky Luddite curmudgeon. I completely understand that we will require shovel applications to clean up the mess; and technical support and software updates over the Internet to keep our virtual shovels digging; and chargers and hot spots to make them work; and receipts to return them when they no longer function.
But if I can trade one shovel for every electronic device in my house that doesn’t easily work, I will be a very happy Luddite curmudgeon indeed.
Or better yet, why not let me use this wealth of new IP addresses to connect all the neurons in my brain that can no longer find each other. Talk about cloud computing.
IPv10 anyone?
© 2011 Dadinthebox.com