This is Technology Bytes, episode 176 for July 19th, 2026.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
This week I’ve been thinking a little bit of the wireless technology that we use in our lives and the things that we really take for granted, and when they don’t work, it kind of puts us out of joint and those kind of things.
So, just thinking of all of the technology in that wireless environment that we take advantage of.
Wi-Fi might be one of the front runners, but probably the most popular is the cellular network.
But we also have other types of Wi-Fi, I mean wireless technology that we use on the regular.
We use Bluetooth, we use near-field communication, the NFC type things, we use like Zigbee or Z-Wave, which is a lot of the smart home, home network type of, smart home, I guess somewhat network type of things.
We also have satellite that we use on a regular basis.
And what do these uses look like for these types of wireless technologies?
Many of them are the same, but local networks in our Wi-Fi environment, whether we’re at work, whether we’re at home, the ability to use devices anywhere in the house without having to be physically connected to anything.
We use them for communication in the cellular network and also for data in the cellular network.
We do it for text messaging, we share photos, we talk on the phone.
You know, it’s so interesting that we really often don’t have phones in our homes anymore because we all use that cellular network system.
In my case, I have a smart home full of things, lights and doorbells and other sensors and things that I use.
And so I have that wireless technology.
Many of it is on the Wi-Fi, but some of it talks to each other, providing kind of a different network of things like the Hue lights that have a smart hub, those kind of things that we take for granted.
And then we also use satellite systems.
Now we can use it with our phones in certain instances, but we use it on the regular for entertainment through radio and those kind of things, but most often probably for GPS and how do we get from point A to point B.
Lots of uses, lots of types of wireless, lots of things we take for granted, and lots of things that in the years past when it was not available made things a little bit harder maybe, although maybe some wish we could go back to that.
But the use of these things make our life a little more simple maybe or complicated, but it allows us to do things that in the past we would have had to look through maps or we would have had to sit in a spot and do Internet-type stuff or communication-type stuff where we are connected to a wire.
And I remember growing up, you know, the telephones in people’s houses, they would just put a longer and longer and longer cord on the handpiece so that they could move around and do things while they were on the phone.
So lots of ways that our lives have improved with this technology.
Maybe sometimes more complicated because we’re always in contact, we’re always connected, we’re always available, so those are kind of interesting things.
But use of technology has always been that.
It’s always been a choice.
It’s always been good and bad, and technology itself is not one or the other.
It’s always in its use where people have chosen to use it wisely and well and good or to use it poorly for bad or wrong or evil even.
But that is just the world that we live in.
The next thing that I would talk about is how all of those technologies work.
But the problem that I have is, while I kind of understand it from the surface, I really don’t understand it in very much depth.
And so the fact that it works at all makes me happy.
And so it’s really our reactions to it working and the times when things aren’t going exactly like we want them to with our wireless technologies, we should be thankful for the times that it does work.
I understand that sometimes things should work, and we get a little bit upset with maybe our cellular companies for some part of their system going down that affects us at a time when we really need that connectivity.
But really our reactions to that is often one of, well, we think we’re entitled, so it’s one of entitlement, where this is something we pay money for, so it should always work, and we should always have this access.
And sometimes even when we pay for it, I think we should have some level of gratitude, some level of thankfulness that we are able to stay in contact with our families, that we know how to drive from point A to point B when we don’t know a city or an area and not get lost, where we have the ability to take photos of events that are happening in our lives and share them with people across the country.
So many ways that we can use technologies to just further our communication and our community with other people.
And so our reactions to this technology is often as important as how we use it or the fact that it exists at all.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytes at merrickfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
