There is a technical turf war going on between an upstart prodigy and a giant monolith. The former is what people were expected to want by 2010; the latter, supposedly sadly outdated. Of course, we are talking fiber versus copper. Frankly, my money is on copper but not without good reason.

Let me explain my perspective. I am not a dyed-in-the-wool telco guru. I started in computers when the only acronyms used were the familiar IOU, UPS, IRS, plus GIGO (garbage in, garbage out), and KISS (keep it simple, stupid). But, I did a 7-year stint at AT&T when they made computers. When they abandoned that venture, I transferred to another business unit only to be given marketing responsibilities for the introduction of Audix, the first voice mail system. You think chain emails are bad now? Trying living through 20-minute voice messages.

Allow me to digress before explaining my current dealings with telephony. In 1978, I was taking an Assembler class at a local college. Assembler was a coding language that looked like the phonetic translations of Neanderthal grunts, with an instruction set that had about the same level of sophistication. All of the students, myself included, thought we were hot stuff because we were already on the computer bandwagon. We were smug in our nerdiness long before the term was ever invented. However, the professor shared his prophesy that not only burst our bubble then but came true all too quickly.

With much insight, he predicted, “Computers are unique and complicated now. But, someday they will be so simple and common they’ll be just like toasters.” To those of us who were banking on getting jobs in technology, this was not exactly what we wanted to hear. Of course, another professor countered and said that he thought a refrigerator was more intelligent than a computer because it didn’t have to be told when to put the light on and off. Sad to say, after a long run and many years of employment in IT, we are indeed at the appliance plateau where toasters reign. This also accounts for my computer career now being toast. I was reminded of this when I told a kid who worked at Staples that I got my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science the first year that the state even recognized that discipline. He then told me that my degree was probably now worthless because I got it so long ago. This young sage deserved a slap in the face. Techies used to wear saffron robes and sandals; now they wear red shirts.

I recall my introduction to modems when I worked for Exxon during their brief flirtation with computers. Our logo was “The Future Without the Shock”, which I shall not take the blame for writing. Anyway, modems then were called acoustical couplers and looked like defibulators. We could run from room to room to check on the data being transmitted at 300 BPS and actually beat the characters before they were displayed. That was a big deal then.

Yet, copper still serves the computer industry very well. The Internet was based upon it and has thrived. I have 2 phone lines that still serve my data needs very well. In hindsight, I worked for a semiconductor company who introduced a chip that would separate video, voice, and data packets as they were transmitted, grouping them accordingly. Speech and moving images were contiguous, while text appeared as a whole. The presentation of each medium was seamless. I was sure this chip would make my 87,000 shares of the company’s penny stock worth millions and I could retire. Alas, even in 1998, the market wasn’t ready for the shock of the future.

Thirty Years Later…
With the latest computer technology being sold at Wal-Mart, I sought greener pastures and returned to telephony. I was introduced to the concept of non-obsolescence when I read a product document that was last updated in 1995. Fifteen years ago? In an era when we change operating systems more often than we do our socks, the computer person in me was aghast. What a concept: a product actually outlived the half-life of its manual. Things that worked were relied upon and kept on working, just like the old adage “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Copper lines function just fine for what they were designed for, and even more.

After 30 years in technology, I have seen trends come and go. Trends are like fashion statements, and are quite different than innovations. The telephone and its conduits were an innovation, changing the way people live. This dispute between fiber and copper seems a no brainer. In my opinion, fiber, which has been around for quite awhile, simply does not meet the needs of the masses it was intended for. To put a twist on the Shoeless Joe Jackson quote in the 1989 film Field of Dreams: build a ball field… and the people may not come.

A perfect example is the picture phone. I saw this and the Pieta in person at the 1964 World’s Fair. We all marveled at both; Michelangelo’s sculpture remains the more inspiring. The picture phone had smiling dummies (mannequins, not simpletons) staged within reach of the camera, much like a recent FTTx ad I saw that had a happy family crowded around a computer. The people from 2010 had the same glazed, artificial look of contentment plastered on their faces that could be as easily accredited to Prozac or drugs as to the availability of mass amounts of data at their fingertips. The picture phone did not succeed because people do not want to be seen when they talk. We are far too busy doing eight zillion other things than to make eye contact with the other person we are speaking to. We don’t want to analyze body language when we are in our pajamas sipping coffee. The proponents of teleconferencing aren’t making many inroads, either. When important things have to be discussed, we do it in person. We press the flesh.

Do we really need all this information? This is an era where people would rather communicate in cryptic shorthand text messages than engage in a full duplex conversation. (full duplex = you talk, I listen. I talk, you listen. You interrupt, I talk over you, and vice versa. All in real-time. Wow!) I refuse to text message. Too much translation is required. In my opinion, text messaging is a major waste of time and intellect. Instead of trying to peck out an alphanumeric Morse code reminiscent of a hybrid between pig Latin and UNIX commands, you could actually talk, get an answer, hear inflection and laughter, and enjoy human contact, albeit analog.

A Hose for the Future
Now, let me share a story that will make my point clear. I am the caretaker of a good-sized estate and recently had to water some new fruit trees and berry bushes that the owner of the property had planted. They were in the 150' x 80' nursery, made impenetrable by a high fence to keep out deer. Having only 1 entrance made it more like Fort Knox. Unfortunately, the hose that ran from the house was about 75' too short to get in let alone reach my objective. So, I dragged up 2 of my barn hoses and attached them all together, giving me just enough slack. Still, it took some finesse to properly water the new shoots. The water pressure was too severe to point the nozzle at them directly, as this would result in the dirt literally being washed away and the roots would be exposed. Hitting these babies with all that water at once reminded me of hosing down an inmate in a bad prison movie.

Instead, I learned to water around a comfortable circumference that allowed the water to puddle in the middle and be slowly absorbed. Another challenge became running the hose in between the parallel rows within the matrix of immature plants. One hug by this tough rubber python could prove disastrous. Recoiling this beast each time to access every row was a redundant exercise that was quickly solved; all that had to be done was to adjust the length of the spray. Not only could 2 rows be watered from the same spot, the rate that the water was dispensed was more effective and soaked in faster. The only exceptions were a few new trees at the exact opposite corner. To take care of them, I actually resorted to multitasking with 2 buckets; as one filled to half capacity, I would run the other over to my last plants. Again, because of the rate of absorption, a full bucket would have been too much.

What does this have to do with data, fiber, and copper? The flow of data and water are often referred to with the same terms. Data travels in streams, physical pathways are called pipes, and constricted flows are bottle necks. I would like to propose too much data being a flood that approaches an overwhelming tsunami. Torrents of multimedia are dispensed in amounts we cannot possible absorb in one lifetime, let alone the rate of kilobytes that we have been led to believe we need, and are drowning in.

Running fiber to each home is the equivalent of digging a well for each one of those trees and berry bushes I water. The legacy copper network could handle an ergonomic level of data flow if it is viewed like that longer hose I pieced together. What we need to develop is a faucet to calibrate the swelling tide, a hose with a good nozzle to dispense it in a less disruptive fashion, and maybe some buckets to collect the overflow so it can be saved for later use. If more speed is truly desired, let more intelligence be added at the end user end; set-top boxes are made for filtering. If the data-hungry public is happy with multimedia clutter and Twitter, let a cheap device eliminate the flutter and jitter.

Remember when families used to sit around the television in the living room, enjoying a well-made movie and each other's company? Heck, we used to just aim an antenna up to the sky and we got all the entertainment we could handle. For free, no less.

Today a new generation thrives on the poor video quality on YouTube and is satisfied with the quality of images taken with a cell phone. Who thought they would pay more than $1,000 to have FTTH run to their home for the latest, greatest graphics and then pay an exorbitant monthly fee? Coming full circle and having data being transmitted through the air again seems the next step -- not laying more physical pathways.

My first dealing with fiber was in the context of it delivering more throughput. Funny, this is also a claim of Metamucil -- and both produce more waste. In my opinion, FTTH may just be an incarnation of GIGO. I'm going to bet on copper until the next major innovation comes along.

 About the Author
Paula Jensen is a freelance writer and consultant in any technical discipline that will have her. After 32 years in computers, she relishes making any product palatable by translating boring specs into salable benefits. When not surfing the ebbing waves in the low tide of high tech, Paula is very involved with animals and her church. She is promoting a musical she wrote about dogs and is finishing a book on wedding photography: the people, not the techniques. For more information, email: pjensen525@hotmail.com or visit: www.vowsthatwow.com.

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