Is A Completely Wireless Future Possible?
Wires are messy and inconvenient. I thought I’d never see the day that I’d happily discard my beloved wired 3.5mm earphones for wireless earbuds.
Everything around us is slowly changing. We’ve gone from Motorola DynaTACs to the iPhone, steam-powered trains to bullet trains, and so much more. Sooner or later LiFi may replace WiFi.
So many things are familiar and at the same time completely new. We live in a world that was once deemed impossible.
In my early childhood, I dealt with slow dial-up internet for what felt like the longest time. Whenever someone needed the landline, there goes my internet. These days, it baffles me that there are people who have never even seen a wired telephone before.
I love my true wireless earphones. I also use a wireless mouse, Bluetooth keyboard, and I even have a power bank that supports wireless charging. Gone are the days where I preferred wired solutions with how far we’ve come. Wires are just messy and inconvenient. Don’t get me started on how easy it is to accidentally tear them apart at the worst time.
I never thought the future would come by so quickly. I believed that I’d never see the day that I’d happily discard my beloved wired 3.5mm earphones for wireless earbuds. With the unpredictability of technology, it truly makes me wonder sometimes if a completely wireless future is possible.
The New York Times in 1903 thought that it would take ten million years for man to fly. It only took about two months after the article was written for the Wright brothers to invent the first successful airplane.
I may not be able to predict the future and be as far off as the New York Times, but I don’t think it would be so bad to make a few somewhat educated guesses with what we have right now.
With that I’ll be focusing on three main components that I think are essential for our wired world to become wireless. These are consumer electronics, infrastructure, and the industry.
Do note that I’m not an expert, so do take my musings with a grain of salt. These are just my speculations.
Consumer Electronics
At a glance, I think consumer electronics would be the first to go completely wireless or to have significantly less wires.
The moment I truly realized that we were going wireless was when Apple made the decision to remove the headphone jacks on the iPhone 7. The idea of not having a headphone jack on a phone was insane to me. But I suppose it made sense.
Despite the blunders that wireless earphones had in its early days, we now have true wireless headsets that work comparably to their wired equivalents. I also do believe that gadgets would also be the first to go wireless because while it may be a bumpy road to the switch, it’s been proven possible.
We’ve gone from removing the headphone jacks to removing wired chargers bundled with phones. Consumer electronics going completely wireless won’t be up to us. Big companies don’t really give us a choice but to follow when they decide to remove features out of their tech.
For better or for worse, they control what we can and cannot buy to a certain extent. While we can buy older tech with the features that we want, new gadgets roll out almost rapidly. It’ll eventually become difficult to get older electronics that are compatible with the latest technology.
With the trajectory of consumer tech, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more wireless appliances in the future. We already have wireless charging on phones, wireless vacuums, and a ton of smart home devices, so I don’t think appliances are far from the equation.
The only minor inconvenience I could imagine from having wireless consumer tech would be having to keep majority of your electronics stuck to a charging station of some sort. In my experience, charging pads are… not great. However, accidentally yanking your cable and damaging it isn’t fun either.
Maybe the future will have a middle ground that would be more convenient for the end user. In fact, there is already tech being developed to solve this problem. Ossia is a company that’s trying to make wireless charging work like WiFi. So far, it looks promising. But it still sounds too good to be true right now.
Despite that, it’s astounding to me that this already exists. It makes me think that having completely wireless consumer electronics will come to us sooner rather than later.
Infrastructure
Now this is something that I think could take us a while. Maybe not even in the next twenty years or so considering the world’s infrastructure as a whole.
Looking at it, 2.9 billion people do not have access to the internet as of 2021. According to the United Nations’ report, there was a sharp growth in internet usage due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most of this increase was driven by developing countries.
That being said, I believe that making the world completely wireless is a daunting task. Countries with less resources will not be able to immediately catch up to their richer peers. Also they may not find the switch necessary, given that there are bigger problems other than eliminating the nuisance that are wires.
On the other side of the spectrum, some developed countries are already taking the wireless game a step further. For instance, New Zealand is working to develop wireless electricity. Their government, and a startup called Emrod has partnered together to deploy a wireless energy infrastructure prototype using rectifying antennas. These antennae will transmit microwaves from point A to point B.
If all goes well, this would be a great solution to providing electricity to those who live in remote areas. Imagine if this technology could be set up all over the world — a home without power may be a thing of the past.
Wireless electricity isn’t a new concept, but it has never been practical.
Nikola Tesla in 1899 was the first to propose and demonstrate wireless power transmission successfully. Unfortunately during his time, a cost efficient method could not be developed for it. Tesla had run out of funding.
Interestingly enough, one of his larger than life ideas was to create a World Wireless System. Had he not run out of capital, we might’ve achieved a wireless world sooner.
Fast forward around a century later, we’re still using wired means to transmit power. Besides the eyesore that power lines pose, no one is too inclined to change it besides just shoving the cables underground.
This might be because it just… works.
Well if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Replacing infrastructure would also cost a pretty penny anyway. The transition would be a pain for the masses who have to deal with possible outages and other issues while everything is being replaced.
This is why I think that it will take a long time before this type of technology will be able to spread globally.
Industry
I feel that getting the industry to innovate on wired tech to make them completely wireless would be a daunting task.
For wireless to be seamless, we would have to agree on a standard so that we wouldn’t have to deal with compatibility issues and the horrors that unclear rules bring. Take the HDMI cable standards for example. Its inconsistency makes purchasing a decent cable more confusing than what it’s supposed to be.
Unfortunately having the industry abide by one set of rules is challenging. It would require governments and organizations to be the arbitrators to make sure that companies follow what has been agreed on. For instance, Apple is testing USB-C port iPhones instead of their usual lightning ports because regulators in Europe agreed that all smartphones should use a common charger by 2024.
While this is all well and good, government policies vary depending on where you live. The push for wireless technology has to be done together on a global scale. Additionally, I believe that another big motivator for the industry is to be the first in the technological race.
I don’t think big tech companies would be very motivated in bringing a completely wireless world if the people don’t have a strong demand for it. While consumer tech may be somewhat feasible, further innovations on emerging technologies such as LPWAN and V2X would be harder to achieve.
If anything, necessity could enable demand to come in. This would be similar to how the pandemic pushed many to use the internet and other internet-based services to operate in a world where going out poses a health risk to yourself and to those around you. However we don’t need global wireless technology right now, so most industries wouldn’t push for it.
Perhaps there would be a few tech demos popping up here and there from some ambitious companies, but I wouldn’t count on a wireless world happening soon. However, I do believe that the tech industry would be the first to push for completely wireless innovations when the need arises.
We still have a long way to go.
Looking back at everything I’ve written, it does look like a completely wireless future is definitely possible. There are already existing wireless solutions to our wired conundrums, but they’re all in their infancy. Wireless electricity, long range networks, and other wireless technologies when combined can pave the way to our wireless future.
All of this leads me to believe that a wireless world may not happen in my lifetime, or I may catch a glimpse of it by the time I become a boomer with no idea how new tech works.
Despite that, I think I would be in total awe. Seeing things that were once just ideas become reality is astounding.
However, like everything, there are always risks.
A completely wireless future is not entirely safe. It would require us to always be connected to a network. Where there is a connection to an outside source, there’s always a security risk. Right now, there are hackers that can take control of stop lights.
Can you imagine how bad it would be if people could hack into wireless networks and shut down entire cities? Yeah, that wouldn’t be fun.
To add to that, our data is also in danger because of our connection to what could possibly be multiple networks on numerous devices. We might as well live in a glass box if others can find out how much devices we have at home, how frequently we use them, and other sensitive data.
Finally there’s also the risk of, well, capitalism. I have no doubt in my mind that a large corporations will emerge to monopolize the wireless market. Hopefully, they’ll have competitors that will keep them in line. We can only hope that the companies doling out the tech we need and the government regulating their products won’t become too greedy.
Striking a good balance is essential if we want a completely wireless future to happen. But most of all, we’ll need the voice of the masses to make sure that we don’t have to deal with a future that works against us.
But who knows if it’ll be this way? The future is always unpredictable, and I can’t tell the future. I can only think about it with what we have in the present.
I honestly just can’t wait for the time I don’t have to deal with another mangled cable.
