Wi-Fi: a boon or a burden

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31 July 2013

I have only recently returned from a very enjoyable family holiday in Spain. While sunshine was in plentiful supply, access to Wi-Fi was, to put it mildly, limited in the apartment where my family and I were staying. In fact, there wasn’t any in the apartment at all.

Instead, you had to go down to the lobby to get on the wireless network with access confined to the hours of 9.30 to 23.30. Unsurprisingly, the network wasn’t exactly a dazzling performer. On a number of occasions, it slowed to a crawl or stopped entirely.

On one of my visits to the lobby, I met an Irish man with an iPad. We bitched about the wireless network and its limitations but, as he pointed out, ten years ago we wouldn’t have been in the lobby having such a conversation. And he was right. I know he was because I was actually in the same place six years ago and there was no wireless network, no iPads and no smart phones.

On one level, having Wi-Fi, no matter how rudimentary, proved to be something of a blessing because it meant I was able to write a couple of columns while I was on holiday. In the old days, I would have had to write them in advance or not bother at all.

Having restricted Wi-Fi access was also a blessing because it meant I spent only a limited time on the network. I don’t know about you, but hanging around the lobby of an apartment block does not come high on my list of things to do on holiday. For the most part, I had a quick look at my Twitter feed and my mail inbox and that was that.

Did I suffer from having such limited exposure to the Internet? I don’t think so. I might have done if I had been working but I wasn’t. I was on holiday and being on holiday was diversion enough.

That’s not to say that wireless access isn’t important. The vast majority of bars and restaurants in our resort offered Wi-Fi to customers as a matter of course. Not to do so would be suicidal when so many customers have come to expect Wi-Fi. In fact, the Wi-Fi in bars and restaurants was usually better than in the apartment block, so much so that I downloaded an album from iTunes in a bar one night.

Nevertheless, I think apartment blocks such as the one we stayed in should not be in any hurry to upgrade and improve their wireless networks. I accept that might appear heretical to many people in the IT industry who make a living from promising and providing improvements in technology performance. But there are times when the end result of technology improvement is a marked decline in the overall experience.

Sometimes, making something better only serves to make things slightly worse. As my fellow holidaymaker observed, 10 years ago (when there was no Wi-Fi), I wouldn’t have been standing in the lobby, I would have been out by the pool, enjoying my holiday.

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