Fergus Cassidy

It'll never catch on

The farce in Ireland on broadband would have even Joseph Conrad weeping into his tea, and a rendition of 'the horror, the horror' wouldn't go astray either.

Eircom's monopoly on the telephone system means that it won't budge on investing in bandwidth until it can see a return for its money - which it can't. Unless we give guarantees (in writing) that we'll sit in front of a computer screen for hours voting (and often) to send some poor lamb to the Eurovision slaught... er song contest.

With figures just out from the telecom's regulator revealing that internet take-up in the home is at a measly 40%, the image of a dog chasing its tail hoves into view.

This is who blinks first territory, not to mention the ad nauseum bouts of finger pointing and buck passing and a government that thanks its lucky stars every day that it no longer owns the telephone network. Imagine the kind of pressure they'd now be under? On top of everything else? Take a bow minister? Ministers? Chief whip? The department of ? Anyone?!!!

But while this merry dance continues, those taking part in the MegaLAN this Easter may want to gather together and do their thing, but they've no choice in the matter. The kind of bandwidth needed to play games with other folk across the internet, just isn't there. Kids huh! With their LANS and their interwebs.

The rest of us don't care too much about the interweb, internet or whatever it's called. What can you do with it that really matters? Book some airplane tickets, buy a book or a CD? That's it. Even an email address has ceased to be the fashion accessory it once was, replaced by the mobile phone with interchangeable fashion accessories and the much easier texting.

In case there's any doubt about this, remember that Ireland's Eurosong vict.. er victor was chosen by text and not by email, which has now become the snailmail, a term it once loved to sneer at.

Sadly, tears and all, the internet in Ireland just doesn't seem like it's going to happen any time soon. If it can't be predicted, then it ain't going to happen. This is nothing new, even sadder, as predictability has never been the hallmark of inventions that have fundamentally changed the way we live.

The earliest combustion engine, invented in 1866, was laughed at and dismissed as the work of a fool. Mind you the engine was seven feet tall.

When Thomas Edison built his first phonograph to capture sound in 1877, he wasn't responding to the masses' desire to crank up some Beethoven. He didn't even know what to do with it. He made a list of ten possible uses, among which were: recording the last words of dying people; announcing clock time and teaching spelling.

Transistors were invented in the United States, but the American vacuum-tube industry was doing very nicely thank you and protected its threatened industry. So Sony, in a post-war Japan, brought transistors into consumer electronics.

Wheels invented in Mexico once upon a time were only used as toys because there were no draught animals around to give a body an idea to mull over. Penicillin, recombinant DNA and a lot of other stuff was never predicted. Most of it happened by accident.

We'll eventually 'get' the internet like the way we 'got' electricity. What was electricity going to change anyway? Only light up a room and show the dirt. Very dear too. Until someone stuck a motor into the mains and fridges, tellys, hair dryers etc etc all appeared out of nowhere.

But you can't tell the young people that today, they wouldn't believe you!!!