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Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Mobile Phones · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hello friends, we have a book coming out finally and
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Speaker 1: Stuff you should read books dot Com pre order. Now,
1:11
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
1:14
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
1:23
Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Charles, Charles in charge.
1:29
Speaker 1: Bryant Man. We might need to take this one over again, Chuck.
1:34
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever laughed like that in my
1:36
Speaker 1: entire life. Yeah, and you can't link me to Scott
1:39
Speaker 1: bay Oh god, oh that's true. That's true. Well because
1:44
Speaker 1: of his acting or I don't like him in real life.
1:48
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding. I know he was great as Bob
1:52
Speaker 1: blab blaw. That's true. I'll give him that. Okay. Uh,
1:57
Speaker 1: that's the common ground we can all reach on Scott
1:59
Speaker 1: bay blah blah blah. So this is Stuff you should Know.
2:05
Speaker 1: The podcast not about Scott Bayo, but about something that
2:09
Speaker 1: I would wager there's about a nineties six percent chance
2:13
Speaker 1: that Scott Bayo has used, uh that's right, cell phones.
2:18
Speaker 1: But before we talk about cell phones, we do want
2:21
Speaker 1: to address a GE's a controversy. I hope not. Uh,
2:27
Speaker 1: you know, we got a book coming out this fall,
2:29
Speaker 1: The Stuff you should know. Uh, Colon, not the stuff
2:33
Speaker 1: you should know. I always get this wrong. What's my problem?
2:36
Speaker 1: The rock stuff you should know? Colon a a great
2:42
Speaker 1: book about lots of great stuff. It's it's called and
2:46
Speaker 1: you came up with the title for Pete's sake. I know,
2:49
Speaker 1: I always get confused when I'm in the moment. An
2:51
Speaker 1: incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. And we've been plugging
2:56
Speaker 1: this pre order gift, which is a cool little custom poster,
2:59
Speaker 1: and we just learned recently that if you live outside
3:02
Speaker 1: the US as of now, that is not available to you. Uh.
3:06
Speaker 1: And we're trying to make that available to people outside
3:09
Speaker 1: the U S And we're working on it, and it's
3:11
Speaker 1: complete more complicated than you would imagine it really is.
3:14
Speaker 1: We don't like things to be complicated. We just like
3:16
Speaker 1: to be able to say things and then they become true. Yeah,
3:19
Speaker 1: but that has not happened in this case because we've
3:22
Speaker 1: run into the juggernaut that is um international intellectual property rights. Yeah,
3:29
Speaker 1: it's weird, it's different, but we're trying to but we
3:32
Speaker 1: don't want to dissuade people outside the US from preordering,
3:35
Speaker 1: because pre orders are very meaningful to booksellers. And book buyers,
3:39
Speaker 1: and it means, it means a lot to us. So
3:41
Speaker 1: but at the same time, Chuck, we just laid it
3:43
Speaker 1: on the line to not cheat people out of something
3:48
Speaker 1: they thought they were going to get. So I feel
3:49
Speaker 1: like we're stand up guys here. We're doing our best,
3:53
Speaker 1: so we'll try to do what we can. But in
3:55
Speaker 1: the meantime, yeah, I mean, you're still going to get
3:57
Speaker 1: the book even if you don't get the poster, how
3:59
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, and the book is really kind of
4:01
Speaker 1: the good part. Sure the poster is cool too, but
4:04
Speaker 1: the book is really what's going to knock your socks
4:06
Speaker 1: right off your feet, that's right. And one day you
4:09
Speaker 1: will even be able to read this book on your
4:11
Speaker 1: mobile phone. Segue complete colon, I mean period period. So, um,
4:18
Speaker 1: we are talking mobile phones and this is like such
4:20
Speaker 1: an enormous behemoth of information. We just first of all,
4:26
Speaker 1: have to say hats off a million times to our
4:29
Speaker 1: buddy Dave Rouse who managed to like whittle this down
4:32
Speaker 1: into a manageable shape and still a pretty comprehensive shape
4:36
Speaker 1: if you ask me. Yeah, I agree. Um. And he
4:39
Speaker 1: starts off with stats, which is one of my favorite
4:41
Speaker 1: things because I always wonder like, how many people have
4:46
Speaker 1: smartphones and cell phones at this point? And of Americans
4:50
Speaker 1: have cell phones in this day and age. I imagine
4:54
Speaker 1: adults is and a lot of kids. But I would
4:56
Speaker 1: assume this is an adult average, I would think for everybody,
5:01
Speaker 1: because kids have their own phones these days. Two it's nuts. Yeah,
5:05
Speaker 1: But I don't think they would factor in like three
5:07
Speaker 1: year olds, would they? If the three year old has
5:09
Speaker 1: a phone, why would you leave the three year old out?
5:11
Speaker 1: You know, I'll tell you what. I got a five
5:13
Speaker 1: year old and she can certainly use it. Yeah. Yeah,
5:16
Speaker 1: But I mean there's that whole screen time thing too
5:18
Speaker 1: that you've got to be concerned about. Two right, Yeah,
5:20
Speaker 1: not really, I mean not all day long or anything.
5:23
Speaker 1: But we grew up on screens here, were just creditor,
5:26
Speaker 1: that's true. Let me ask you this though, Um, so,
5:31
Speaker 1: is is she generation Z? Or is she something brand new? Oh?
5:36
Speaker 1: I don't even know. Huh, Well, I don't know what
5:39
Speaker 1: gen Z is. I guess is that behind right behind millennials? No,
5:43
Speaker 1: I don't think she would be then. I don't even
5:45
Speaker 1: know how that stuff works. It's all fake. Well we'll
5:47
Speaker 1: find out and report back sometime. So so one thing
5:51
Speaker 1: I want to. I want to throw in there though,
5:53
Speaker 1: Chuck is uh and by the way, generations are not fake.
5:55
Speaker 1: We did an episode on it. Yeah, it was a
5:59
Speaker 1: good one too, um, and I think we conclusively established
6:02
Speaker 1: that they are real. Um. But the the worldwide cell
6:07
Speaker 1: phone ownership is something like sixty one point seven yeah. Yeah,
6:14
Speaker 1: and that's just that's cell phones, though like smartphones, it's
6:17
Speaker 1: it's less, but it's just a little less, especially considering
6:20
Speaker 1: that smartphones have only been around a relatively short time
6:24
Speaker 1: compared to cell phones, which, by the way, as we'll see,
6:26
Speaker 1: have been around since the seventies. Yeah, I think it's smartphones.
6:32
Speaker 1: And nineteen was about in the US, up from thirty
6:36
Speaker 1: five uh seven, eight years previous to that. And I
6:41
Speaker 1: think it's about forty worldwide. So a lot of people
6:45
Speaker 1: have a phone, I think is the overall point. We're
6:47
Speaker 1: trying to drive home here. Yeah, and we'll get into
6:50
Speaker 1: phone addiction late in the episode. But I did see
6:53
Speaker 1: stats that people look at their phone and check it
6:56
Speaker 1: eighty times a day and uh touch it or I'm sorry,
7:01
Speaker 1: um yeah, touch it times a day, And the math
7:05
Speaker 1: there works out to about thirty five touches per check,
7:08
Speaker 1: which seems about right, Okay, that makes sense. I didn't.
7:12
Speaker 1: I thought touch was like when you reach for it
7:14
Speaker 1: and touch it. So this this is like people did
7:18
Speaker 1: that times a day. Yeah, but then they only actually
7:21
Speaker 1: interacted with the thirty five of those times. That's what
7:23
Speaker 1: I thought. Now I think it's eighty times you'll pick
7:26
Speaker 1: it up and touch it thirty five different ways, which
7:30
Speaker 1: is I'll never mind. I'm not gonna make that joke.
7:33
Speaker 1: But but it's like Kama Sutra esque. Well that's where
7:38
Speaker 1: I was headed. It wasn't really way to put it.
7:39
Speaker 1: Did I really read your mind? Well? It was sexy
7:42
Speaker 1: in nature? Sure? Okay, sure? Well if I if I
7:45
Speaker 1: can't read your sexiness on your mind, I don't know
7:48
Speaker 1: what I can read about you. You know, and you're
7:50
Speaker 1: just in one ear hole, that's true. Same same to you, buddy,
7:54
Speaker 1: left mind your left or your right. I have an
7:57
Speaker 1: earbud in my left ear, and we don't even look
7:59
Speaker 1: at each other when we do these. You're on my
8:01
Speaker 1: left right now too? You know that? Love? Yeah, Kama
8:06
Speaker 1: Sutra style. So I think we should dive into this history.
8:09
Speaker 1: I thought this. I frankly thought all of this was
8:12
Speaker 1: super fascinating because I learned a lot of things. Uh,
8:17
Speaker 1: and a lot of it was just simple stuff that
8:19
Speaker 1: you know. I never knew what G stood for her
8:22
Speaker 1: LTE or a lot of this stuff. I just never
8:24
Speaker 1: really even knew what it stood for. I know, it's
8:27
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. So we can finally tell everybody the G
8:30
Speaker 1: and all of like the cell phone and cellular technology
8:33
Speaker 1: stands for Gary. I thought it was Grandma that's had
8:36
Speaker 1: different research. It's Gary. So you have first Gary, second Gary,
8:41
Speaker 1: third Gary, UM, and so on all the way up
8:45
Speaker 1: to five Gary, which we're about to really start to
8:48
Speaker 1: get into. Five Gary started coronavirus. It did, how so well,
8:56
Speaker 1: that's one of the conspiracies about five G. Out of
8:58
Speaker 1: all the wacky conspiracy is about five G is that
9:02
Speaker 1: it started coronavirus and then was put in place to
9:04
Speaker 1: keep people at home while they secretly go out and
9:07
Speaker 1: install a bunch of five G things. That's how the
9:10
Speaker 1: world works. It's all so the five Gary is it's
9:13
Speaker 1: all five Gary's fault. So this Gary guy, we we
9:17
Speaker 1: need to have a talk with him, especially because in
9:20
Speaker 1: reality G stands for generation. Sorry Gary, but UM, which
9:25
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense, But a generation is not
9:28
Speaker 1: just like UM it's often applied to specific technology like uh,
9:34
Speaker 1: three G Celluh iPhone is the third generation iPhone, but
9:39
Speaker 1: it was technically a second generation mobile phone, which gets
9:43
Speaker 1: a little confusing. But when you're talking about mobile phone technology, um,
9:47
Speaker 1: and you're talking about generations, a generation basically defines all
9:52
Speaker 1: of the underlying technology from the network to the actual
9:57
Speaker 1: devices that are designed to operate on that network. That
10:00
Speaker 1: typically describes a generation when it comes to telecommunications technology.
10:06
Speaker 1: And they can come really fast, they can come achingly slow,
10:10
Speaker 1: like the five G is right now, um, but they
10:13
Speaker 1: do come eventually, and uh they seem to be worth
10:17
Speaker 1: waiting around for because they have advanced us by leaps
10:21
Speaker 1: and bounds as far as being able to sit around
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Speaker 1: and touch our phones thirty five different ways twenty undred
10:27
Speaker 1: times a day. Goes. That's right, But we can go
10:30
Speaker 1: back to zero G. If you want to talk about
10:34
Speaker 1: the origin of a phone that was mobile, we have
10:37
Speaker 1: to go back to the nineteen forties. And uh, you know,
10:41
Speaker 1: this sort of made me think of army phones and
10:44
Speaker 1: like field phones, and I was like, what were those
10:46
Speaker 1: things operating on? And you know the ones in the
10:49
Speaker 1: tent that you see with the general are you know, wired,
10:53
Speaker 1: but the ones out on the field worked on radio waves,
10:57
Speaker 1: and and my dad actually had a couple of those
10:59
Speaker 1: when I was little that we used when we were camping. Really, yeah,
11:03
Speaker 1: it was neat that it was sort of a later model.
11:05
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a World War two thing that was
11:07
Speaker 1: a big block with a hand set that you stick on. Uh.
11:11
Speaker 1: It was. It looked like a giant walkie talkie. Basically,
11:15
Speaker 1: I think I've seen what you're talking about, and I
11:17
Speaker 1: mean that that kind of technology, it's just basically used
11:21
Speaker 1: the same kind of radio wave that um, you would
11:24
Speaker 1: use to broadcast like say a ham radio, except it
11:26
Speaker 1: was a much more portable technology. And actually we use
11:30
Speaker 1: that that technology, like analog radio wave technology for our
11:36
Speaker 1: cell phones up until I think basically, um the two
11:42
Speaker 1: thousands maybe, so this initial like we weren't logging around
11:47
Speaker 1: these clunky radio phones. We weren't using radio phones that
11:50
Speaker 1: are basically like many radio broadcasters. But we were using
11:52
Speaker 1: the same form of technology, which is an analog radio wave.
11:56
Speaker 1: That was the whole thing. But what's set the radio
11:58
Speaker 1: phone apart from what we later become a cell phone
12:02
Speaker 1: is the kind of network that the radio phone interacted with,
12:05
Speaker 1: right Yeah, the first radio telephone network was in St.
12:09
Speaker 1: Louis in the mid nineteen fortiesh and that just had
12:13
Speaker 1: one radio tower could handle about calls at once. UM.
12:19
Speaker 1: And they're, you know, they're routing this thing. Operators are
12:21
Speaker 1: routing this thing to land lines basically or other radio phones. UM.
12:27
Speaker 1: But they were like, this has got to change, Like
12:28
Speaker 1: there's if we want a mobile phone, we gotta be
12:30
Speaker 1: able to call from anywhere. Uh. And then I think
12:35
Speaker 1: Bell Labs was working on a project and a man
12:38
Speaker 1: named d. H Ring believe it or not, wrote a
12:42
Speaker 1: memo based on some uh I guess research by a
12:46
Speaker 1: guy named an engineer there named William ray Young that said, Hey,
12:51
Speaker 1: what we need to do is build a network of
12:54
Speaker 1: these towers, lay them out in a hexagonal pattern, and
12:58
Speaker 1: they'll just hand off basically, you know, as you move around,
13:03
Speaker 1: they will hand off the signal to the next tower.
13:06
Speaker 1: And that's that was the first sort of network created, right,
13:10
Speaker 1: which which I mean that would make a mobile phone
13:13
Speaker 1: actual mobile phone. You didn't have to basically stay in
13:16
Speaker 1: just in proximity of that radio tower. You could move around,
13:19
Speaker 1: you could actually be mobile. And that was what you say, Yeah,
13:24
Speaker 1: And I said, created I should say the idea was created,
13:26
Speaker 1: it was a long time before it was actually created. Yeah,
13:29
Speaker 1: because that memo, it was just a memo. It was
13:31
Speaker 1: published internally only at Bell Labs. But um, it is,
13:35
Speaker 1: you know, definitively the the first idea for a cell
13:40
Speaker 1: phone network. But it wasn't until like you said, a
13:43
Speaker 1: little while later, until the sixties, that some more Bell
13:46
Speaker 1: Lab engineers, a new generation of them, if you will,
13:49
Speaker 1: a new gary of Bell Lab engineers, were the feeling
13:53
Speaker 1: that's gonna stick came along and they they said, hey,
13:59
Speaker 1: this is really good. Let's let's figure out how to
14:00
Speaker 1: actually make this work. And so they took d. H.
14:03
Speaker 1: Ring and Willie ray Young's design and turned it into
14:07
Speaker 1: the first like actual here's how you do it kind
14:11
Speaker 1: of paper, um and research. And I couldn't see that
14:15
Speaker 1: they coined the term, but they they seem to be
14:19
Speaker 1: credited with, if not coining the term cellular, at least
14:22
Speaker 1: describing something that would very soon become known as cellular,
14:26
Speaker 1: because it's not the phone that's cellular, is actually the network. Yeah,
14:30
Speaker 1: and here's the thing. If you want to well, actually
14:32
Speaker 1: here's two things. At your next dinner party in two years,
14:37
Speaker 1: you can you can be this guy or that guy,
14:41
Speaker 1: and that's gender neutral of course. Uh, you can be
14:45
Speaker 1: the guy that says, you know what, they call them
14:47
Speaker 1: cellular networks because they were laid out in a grid, uh,
14:51
Speaker 1: this hexagonal grid that looked like cells in the human body.
14:54
Speaker 1: And people will say, that's so cool. I never knew that.
14:57
Speaker 1: Or you can be this guy who says, so technically,
15:01
Speaker 1: it's a mobile phone communicating over a cellular network, not
15:06
Speaker 1: a cellular phone. Right, don't be the second guy. Don't
15:09
Speaker 1: be that guy. No. I mean, he's right, and he'll
15:13
Speaker 1: probably get into heaven just for being right all the time,
15:16
Speaker 1: but people won't like him here or there. You know. So, um,
15:21
Speaker 1: you've got a cellular network that's starting to be developed
15:23
Speaker 1: in the sixties, and I guess words started to get
15:25
Speaker 1: out because um, the the US, I guess the FCC
15:31
Speaker 1: started working with Bell Labs, um, and they started to say, Okay,
15:37
Speaker 1: we're gonna build this network. Everybody gets to making devices
15:40
Speaker 1: that can work on this. But it turns out I
15:42
Speaker 1: don't know if they were inspired by it, or if
15:44
Speaker 1: it's just kind of like a side track, or this
15:47
Speaker 1: is all going on at the same time, Like there
15:49
Speaker 1: seems to be some sort of um ripple in the
15:53
Speaker 1: zeitgeist at the time that everybody wanted to develop a
15:55
Speaker 1: mobile phone network. And it wasn't Bell Labs in injunction
16:00
Speaker 1: with the FCC that created the first one. The first
16:03
Speaker 1: one wasn't in America. It was actually, as far as
16:05
Speaker 1: anyone can tell, the first genuine mobile phone network was
16:10
Speaker 1: UM in Finland, their audio radio Politan. I think I
16:16
Speaker 1: just nailed because I made it sound like Buyork at
16:18
Speaker 1: the end there. Yeah, they were the first ones, and uh,
16:22
Speaker 1: you know, they have the advantage of being much smaller obviously,
16:24
Speaker 1: but that was the first nationwide mobile phone network in
16:27
Speaker 1: nineteen nine, and by the late seventies, I think they
16:33
Speaker 1: had everything covered with a hundred and forty stations and
16:36
Speaker 1: uh thirty five thousand users in the mid eighties, which
16:39
Speaker 1: is not too bad, which is it's nothing worth sneezing at,
16:42
Speaker 1: but it's still technically not a cellular network. It's a
16:46
Speaker 1: radio phone network because they just had a bunch of
16:49
Speaker 1: radio phone towers that were placed far enough apart that
16:53
Speaker 1: you could kind of move around. It was not a
16:54
Speaker 1: cellular network. So we do go back to the United
16:57
Speaker 1: States now and find the first cellular network um developed
17:02
Speaker 1: in the world as far as I could tell, but
17:04
Speaker 1: astoundingly as that word got out that everybody need to
17:08
Speaker 1: start developing devices that could work on cellular networks. Um,
17:13
Speaker 1: they actually got the car ahead of the horse, and
17:16
Speaker 1: the first cell phone actually debuted before the first cellular
17:21
Speaker 1: network in the United States. Yeah, it seems like I've
17:24
Speaker 1: never had a motorola, but it seems like they've always
17:27
Speaker 1: kind of been on the forefront of things without a
17:29
Speaker 1: lot of hoop la um, like like the razor was
17:33
Speaker 1: a big deal, and the I think they they had
17:37
Speaker 1: the first brick phone and bag phone. Even I didn't
17:41
Speaker 1: know about the bag phone, but they definitely had the
17:43
Speaker 1: brick phone. The one that Zack Morris had the Din
17:47
Speaker 1: Attack was the very first cell phone, at the very
17:51
Speaker 1: least ever make a cell phone call in the United States. Yeah.
17:54
Speaker 1: That was nineteen seventy three. And this guy, Marty Cooper
17:58
Speaker 1: had been an engineer engineer there for a long time
18:01
Speaker 1: and big competitor with a T and T obviously, and
18:05
Speaker 1: so this he took this two and a half pound
18:08
Speaker 1: phone that's ten inches long. Everyone knows that great beautiful
18:11
Speaker 1: brick phones and went out on the street corner in Manhattan,
18:14
Speaker 1: supposedly and called Joel Ingle, which was one of those
18:19
Speaker 1: two guys I don't think we mentioned them by name
18:21
Speaker 1: who kicked off a T and T S program and
18:23
Speaker 1: he was I guess, sort of the arch rival at
18:26
Speaker 1: Bell Labs. And he called him up and I don't
18:30
Speaker 1: know what he said, like, hey, sucker, what do you
18:32
Speaker 1: think of this? Yeah, chump, want to peel yourself off
18:35
Speaker 1: of the ground and get to work for me. Um.
18:38
Speaker 1: And I saw there's a great Popular Science cover from
18:42
Speaker 1: July seventy three with that Dynatech phone on it and
18:46
Speaker 1: it said the new did you see this thing? The phone?
18:49
Speaker 1: Or the cover? The cover? It said the new new
18:53
Speaker 1: take Along telephones? And I just thought how funny that
18:56
Speaker 1: would be if that's stuck, you know, and we would
18:59
Speaker 1: be like, have you seen my take Along? I can't
19:01
Speaker 1: find it anywhere? And we had the exact same kind
19:05
Speaker 1: of cell phone, like it never evolved past the Dana tech.
19:10
Speaker 1: That would be even better. Uh. And by the way,
19:11
Speaker 1: another UH story in that issue was solving the mysteries
19:15
Speaker 1: of the Northern lights, right are they? God? Sources say yes, so, Um,
19:23
Speaker 1: we've got finally with the first cell phone we still
19:27
Speaker 1: haven't gotten the first cellular network. Apparently Marty Cooper Um
19:33
Speaker 1: possibly made a call in Manhattan connecting to a radio
19:37
Speaker 1: tower from from Bell Labs. We're not sure, but he
19:41
Speaker 1: still came up with the first cell phone. It wouldn't
19:43
Speaker 1: become a genuine bona fide cell phone for a few
19:46
Speaker 1: more years though, until and I say, because we've finally
19:50
Speaker 1: reached the first generation of cellular networks, Chuck, we should
19:54
Speaker 1: probably take a break. All right, let's do it. M hmm, Okay,
20:22
Speaker 1: we just leapt friends from zero G to one G.
20:26
Speaker 1: We're we're finally at our first Gary and he's doing great. Three.
20:33
Speaker 1: He's showing a lot of chest hair, got a couple
20:35
Speaker 1: of medallions. He's uh just auditioned for a new show
20:38
Speaker 1: called The A Team. Doesn't get it, but he still
20:41
Speaker 1: feels pretty good about the work that he put in
20:43
Speaker 1: in the audition. I was just trying to call it
20:46
Speaker 1: to face his name, the actor who played him, Dirk Benedict.
20:49
Speaker 1: Oh wow, was that it? Yeah? I just see Gary
20:53
Speaker 1: like going Dirk Benedict always getting my parts. Well, they
21:00
Speaker 1: looked a lot alike. Uh, they did, especially in three. Uh.
21:05
Speaker 1: And like you mentioned earlier, this was still on um
21:09
Speaker 1: analog radio signals at this time, right, No, just not great.
21:14
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're right. I'm sorry, I'm right. So, yes,
21:17
Speaker 1: it was analog signals. Do you say you're right? I'm right. Yeah,
21:21
Speaker 1: everybody wins, Um it was it was analog signals. But
21:26
Speaker 1: now these radio towers were all part of a genuine
21:29
Speaker 1: cellular network. So yes, you're right, and it was analog
21:32
Speaker 1: for sure. Yeah, which is you know, analog is great
21:35
Speaker 1: in a lot of applications. If you're talking about guitar amps, uh,
21:39
Speaker 1: to vamps and things like that, analog is great. But
21:43
Speaker 1: uh and record players, and there's a good argument to
21:46
Speaker 1: be made for analog technology. But if you're talking about
21:49
Speaker 1: cell phones, uh, they can only handle a certain amount
21:53
Speaker 1: of calls. There's no like virtually no security. You can
21:55
Speaker 1: tap into one of those calls back then pretty easily
21:58
Speaker 1: if you know what you're doing. But it was, you know,
22:01
Speaker 1: it was the first attempt. It was, and from what
22:04
Speaker 1: I saw, the sound qualities actually clear. But the problem
22:07
Speaker 1: is it's clear because there's not as much loss because
22:12
Speaker 1: you're not compressing anything. Right. Yeah, And so so analog
22:17
Speaker 1: had a lot of drawbacks and it still has a
22:19
Speaker 1: lot of drawbacks whenever it's used, UM and it. But
22:22
Speaker 1: it would stay that way for UM quite a while actually,
22:26
Speaker 1: I think until the early nineties. So we went from
22:30
Speaker 1: where the first cellular network was set up by A
22:32
Speaker 1: T and T UM into the early nineties, a good
22:36
Speaker 1: decade where everybody was just using analog cell signals. And
22:42
Speaker 1: finally sometime in oh, I guess about one or two UM,
22:50
Speaker 1: the second generation came along. And this is an enormous
22:54
Speaker 1: leap forward as far as telecommunications technology went. Like zero G,
22:59
Speaker 1: two one was kind of edging forward, and it was
23:02
Speaker 1: mostly about the creation of the cell phone and then
23:05
Speaker 1: figuring out how cell phone network would work. Two G
23:08
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, let's see what we can do with
23:11
Speaker 1: this puppy, and and taking a a dumpy loser short
23:17
Speaker 1: order cook and turning him into um to what Dirk,
23:23
Speaker 1: what's his name, Benedict? Yes, hey, I don't want to
23:28
Speaker 1: insult any short order cooks out there. No, No, it's
23:32
Speaker 1: you know who I was describing as Barth from you
23:35
Speaker 1: can't do that on television. I thought you were gonna
23:37
Speaker 1: say the guy from Alice Victor back was not dumpy
23:42
Speaker 1: my friend. Uh So to G what they did was
23:48
Speaker 1: they digitized everything, and they squeezed all that stuff down
23:52
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, apparently could fit about ten
23:55
Speaker 1: and this is a rough estimate, but about ten digital
23:58
Speaker 1: phone calls into that same band with as the one
24:01
Speaker 1: analog call. And this was a big leap forward. And
24:05
Speaker 1: this was in Europe is where things got started and
24:08
Speaker 1: um and also where text messaging got started. I didn't
24:11
Speaker 1: know what SMS stood for until yesterday. I had no idea.
24:16
Speaker 1: I never see I just never tried to figure this out.
24:19
Speaker 1: I never thought about any of this stuff. I yeah,
24:21
Speaker 1: it didn't really matter enough to me to stop and
24:23
Speaker 1: think about either. I have too much to do. Stands
24:27
Speaker 1: for I want you to know. I think you should
24:31
Speaker 1: all right. It stands for short Message service because the
24:35
Speaker 1: first text could only be a hundred and sixty characters.
24:39
Speaker 1: And this was, like I said, rolled out in Britain.
24:43
Speaker 1: And when I think back to my uh my first
24:47
Speaker 1: European trip in that is when I first saw a
24:50
Speaker 1: widespread cell phone use. Yeah, it was in England and
24:55
Speaker 1: I was like, what is going on here there? Like
24:57
Speaker 1: it wasn't ubiquitous, but a lot of people were using
25:00
Speaker 1: cell phones in the mid nineties. Yeah, and using them
25:03
Speaker 1: to text too, right, I guess, I mean they were.
25:06
Speaker 1: I didn't really you know, I couldn't. I didn't even
25:08
Speaker 1: know what texting was at the time, but they had
25:11
Speaker 1: the ability to. Yeah. Um, you me spent some time
25:14
Speaker 1: in Japan in the nineties, um, and she said, like
25:18
Speaker 1: it was just nuts what they were doing with cell phones,
25:21
Speaker 1: especially texting, And then came back to the States and
25:23
Speaker 1: had to waited like a couple more years before it
25:25
Speaker 1: really caught on here, because apparently it was. The epicenter
25:28
Speaker 1: was Europe thanks to some some engineers with what's called
25:32
Speaker 1: the group Special Mobile, which was formed back in the
25:35
Speaker 1: eighties to like create a euro like a europe wide
25:39
Speaker 1: cellular network. Well, one of their engineers created SMS, so
25:42
Speaker 1: it started to take off there. But apparently, um, it
25:46
Speaker 1: took off in particular because of Vota Phone, which is
25:49
Speaker 1: like a pay as you go phone service, and the
25:52
Speaker 1: first SMS set um message ever sent was sent by
25:57
Speaker 1: a Vota Phone engineer from what I understand, Yeah, and
26:00
Speaker 1: I think was that the one where he sent Mary
26:02
Speaker 1: Christmas to his boss. Yeah, he did, and his boss said,
26:06
Speaker 1: I'm Jewish, You're fired, right, get back to work. Yeah,
26:11
Speaker 1: but you you mentioned the pay as you go. I
26:13
Speaker 1: think that sort of democratized it, and that all of
26:16
Speaker 1: a sudden you didn't need a credit check or you
26:19
Speaker 1: didn't have to have this recurring monthly payment drawn from
26:22
Speaker 1: a bank accountter credit card or something. You could just
26:25
Speaker 1: if you had some money, you could get a phone
26:27
Speaker 1: a lot of times for free and just pay for
26:29
Speaker 1: the calls and the text that you made, and that
26:33
Speaker 1: that really made it spread kind of far and wide. Yeah,
26:36
Speaker 1: and if you were a criminal, you could pay for
26:38
Speaker 1: your phone in cash and use it until you figured
26:40
Speaker 1: the cops had a beat on you and trash that
26:42
Speaker 1: one and get another one. What are those called burner phones?
26:46
Speaker 1: That's right. Um, So the sms started take off in
26:50
Speaker 1: part because, like you said, the cell phone itself was democratized,
26:54
Speaker 1: but also because they started adding like alpha numeric key pads,
27:00
Speaker 1: not just numeric keypads, because initially, when you wanted to text,
27:05
Speaker 1: you had to you had to just use a keypad,
27:07
Speaker 1: just like remember when you had to spell out something
27:09
Speaker 1: with a rotary phone like ABC were associated with one,
27:13
Speaker 1: you had to do that. And so everybody's like, I'm
27:16
Speaker 1: not texting, And in fact, at first, apparently if you
27:20
Speaker 1: were in America, you sent about point four texts a month.
27:25
Speaker 1: You didn't even bother to finish an entire text or
27:27
Speaker 1: even half of a text in a single month, and
27:30
Speaker 1: then just in a few years, five years, four years later,
27:33
Speaker 1: it was up to something like, um, I think thirty
27:37
Speaker 1: five texts a month, which is still pittally compared to today,
27:41
Speaker 1: but you can see how much it took off because
27:43
Speaker 1: they started to add those alpha numeric keypads. Yeah, I
27:47
Speaker 1: was way way late to texting. UM. I remember when
27:52
Speaker 1: I was working as a p a with my little
27:54
Speaker 1: handheld Nokia, which was great because you didn't have when
27:58
Speaker 1: I first started peeing, you had a pager and they
28:01
Speaker 1: would paid you and you would have to stop and
28:03
Speaker 1: find a pay phone and call the production office. You
28:05
Speaker 1: had this no Ki, and all of a sudden I
28:07
Speaker 1: could talk to them. But I remember them sending me
28:09
Speaker 1: text occasionally, and I was one of those was like,
28:12
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna take time to go, you know, hit
28:16
Speaker 1: number one three times if I want the letters c uh.
28:20
Speaker 1: And when the smartphones came out, I wasn't even texting
28:23
Speaker 1: for a while, and I was a little annoyed that
28:26
Speaker 1: people were texting, and I was like I don't want
28:27
Speaker 1: to do that, can just call me. So I was
28:30
Speaker 1: kind of a holdout and finally I was like, all right,
28:32
Speaker 1: and I gave in. And now I totally see the
28:34
Speaker 1: value in it. Sure, you don't have to talk to
28:36
Speaker 1: anybody exactly. You could have long fights on a text. Man,
28:42
Speaker 1: that's the worst. No, those are Those are pretty bad.
28:46
Speaker 1: Do you remember those lamos who associated texting with with
28:49
Speaker 1: being girly up until oh yeah, it was a thing.
28:53
Speaker 1: Was that a thing? Yeah, that was a thing. Now
28:55
Speaker 1: like text yeah, so like I'm not gonna text, don't
29:00
Speaker 1: noted girl. And then now they associate like recycling and
29:03
Speaker 1: other like eco conscious things with with girliness, which is
29:07
Speaker 1: super healthy for our systems. Gotcha, Okay, I know you're
29:11
Speaker 1: talking about now. But ironically they express their disdain for
29:15
Speaker 1: recycling via text to other dudes, so maybe they'll eventually
29:19
Speaker 1: come along. And now they text pictures of their barbed
29:21
Speaker 1: wire tattoo on their bicep. Are people still doing that
29:26
Speaker 1: or is that just a throwback thing? Oh? I don't know.
29:29
Speaker 1: I just saw a funny meme today that said you're
29:32
Speaker 1: anti masker starter kit and it had a barbed wire tattoo,
29:37
Speaker 1: A pair of Oakley's sitting on top of a head
29:40
Speaker 1: a goatee, and then those big chunky white tennis shoes
29:46
Speaker 1: that I'm not even sure who makes them, but you
29:48
Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. I think every brand there
29:51
Speaker 1: is makes them. Oh has one of those? Those are
29:54
Speaker 1: the ones that float with this articulated feet in um
29:58
Speaker 1: in the the what's that sound body of water off
30:01
Speaker 1: of British Columbia. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what
30:03
Speaker 1: you mean. Yeah. Hey, one of the best starter packs
30:07
Speaker 1: I ever saw it was the oh my gosh, that
30:10
Speaker 1: smells amazing, what are you cooking? Starter pack? And it
30:13
Speaker 1: just had a picture of a garlic and a picture
30:15
Speaker 1: of an onion? Is love that so much? Man? Is that?
30:22
Speaker 1: Is that a meme starter pack? Yeah? Okay, I don't
30:24
Speaker 1: know about any of that stuff. So apparently you do,
30:26
Speaker 1: because you know, like the anti mask or starter pack thing.
30:29
Speaker 1: I just saw it today for you. You should text
30:33
Speaker 1: it to somebody. Yeah, so after text, we're still done
30:38
Speaker 1: talking about text. Everybody, just buckle up because at first,
30:41
Speaker 1: if you wanted to text somebody, like you said, you
30:43
Speaker 1: had a hundred and sixty characters, you couldn't even text
30:47
Speaker 1: from your phone. Your phone could get a text like
30:49
Speaker 1: some some dumpy barthesque pager, right, but you couldn't actually
30:54
Speaker 1: do texting even if you wanted to go to the
30:56
Speaker 1: trouble of just using your numeric keypad. Um. So eventually
31:00
Speaker 1: we started to leap forward. The big leap forward was
31:03
Speaker 1: going from SMS to m M S, where all of
31:06
Speaker 1: a sudden you could now text more than just text.
31:09
Speaker 1: You could text pictures, you could text music, you could
31:13
Speaker 1: text all sorts of stuff. And the person on the
31:16
Speaker 1: other end had just been days upon weeks downloading a
31:20
Speaker 1: single file that you sent. It would frequently get interrupted,
31:24
Speaker 1: and it was one of the most aggravating things you
31:27
Speaker 1: could possibly engage in. But it was like the promise
31:30
Speaker 1: of this future where this wasn't aggravating and it was
31:33
Speaker 1: ordinary and every day to do. Yeah. And the first
31:37
Speaker 1: camera was the Sony ericson T sixty eight. I had
31:42
Speaker 1: an attachable camera, which is adorable. Uh. And those I
31:47
Speaker 1: remember seeing some of those early picks that were very
31:50
Speaker 1: creddy and grainy, uh yeah, and small. But it's sort
31:55
Speaker 1: of just married the idea of a camera with a phone. Um.
31:58
Speaker 1: But I have to say, man, when I look at
31:59
Speaker 1: those old when I see that Sony Ericsson. I long
32:02
Speaker 1: for that thing. Oh, you can get those. They're they're
32:06
Speaker 1: called dumb phones. And like a lot of people, as
32:08
Speaker 1: we'll see, are are kind of making the switch over
32:11
Speaker 1: to that just because they just want a phone that
32:13
Speaker 1: can maybe text, maybe take a picture, and make calls. Well,
32:19
Speaker 1: there I found one that I I might get. Uh,
32:23
Speaker 1: there's something called the light phone. Have you seen that.
32:26
Speaker 1: So the first version of the light phone had I
32:30
Speaker 1: think you could make calls, and it had, um, maybe
32:35
Speaker 1: a clock and an alarm and that's it. And the
32:39
Speaker 1: idea was is that you use it as a companion phone,
32:43
Speaker 1: so you still have your smartphone, but leave that thing
32:45
Speaker 1: at home a lot of times when you go out,
32:47
Speaker 1: take this light phone and engage with the world. Um.
32:51
Speaker 1: And now the light Phone two is out and it
32:54
Speaker 1: can actually text, and it has a clock and I
32:58
Speaker 1: think minimal directions, no apps at all still, but it
33:03
Speaker 1: does have bluetooth and a headphone jack and it's meant
33:07
Speaker 1: to just sort of replace the smartphone for people that
33:09
Speaker 1: are kind of done with the distraction of it. I
33:12
Speaker 1: don't know, man, it sounds like the light phone is
33:15
Speaker 1: is going down a slippery slope here. Yeah, I mean
33:19
Speaker 1: I started looking at my phone. I was like, what
33:21
Speaker 1: do I really need? Like I would want to call
33:24
Speaker 1: text mhm and take pictures? What about email and directions
33:30
Speaker 1: and get email? And I think I could live without
33:34
Speaker 1: the rest? So like, what do you use for directions?
33:38
Speaker 1: What app? I just used the Maps app on the iPhone?
33:42
Speaker 1: Do you I use Ways almost exclusively? Yeah, because I
33:45
Speaker 1: almost never walk. You know, Atlanta is not a huge
33:48
Speaker 1: walking town, so when you when you drive, Ways is
33:52
Speaker 1: definitely the preferred app. Well, I don't never drive very far,
33:56
Speaker 1: so Ways didn't really come. But I'm looking at all
33:58
Speaker 1: these dumb apps and like all that stuff could wait
34:02
Speaker 1: really for me? Oh totally their distractions. Yeah, I could
34:06
Speaker 1: wait till I get home to check my laptop for
34:08
Speaker 1: the most part. So I need I need a web browser, phone, text,
34:15
Speaker 1: an email. I could probably do fine with that. It
34:17
Speaker 1: would be nice to have Ways, but you can always
34:19
Speaker 1: just get like a you know, yeah, but the web
34:22
Speaker 1: browser is at all those things. That app just makes
34:25
Speaker 1: it easier to do. No, it's true, it is true.
34:28
Speaker 1: I guess, um, yeah, I'll give up my web browser. Okay,
34:32
Speaker 1: you don't have to. I don't have to. Late, I
34:34
Speaker 1: already said, I was going to al right, so let's
34:38
Speaker 1: let's get back to it. Here. Where are we? Here?
34:39
Speaker 1: Are we? All right? We're at three? G Now we're
34:42
Speaker 1: at three Gary's I think. Yeah. So so second second
34:46
Speaker 1: generation leapt ahead in a lot of ways, and then
34:49
Speaker 1: third generation basically took it and kept going. And this
34:52
Speaker 1: was the um generation that really said, oh yeah, that
34:56
Speaker 1: that whole like texting, video and pick ers and music
35:01
Speaker 1: and all that, that's a really good idea. How can
35:02
Speaker 1: we improve on that. So if if the first or
35:05
Speaker 1: if the second generation was all about um, you know,
35:09
Speaker 1: kind of leaping forward with these bright ideas, the third
35:12
Speaker 1: generation was all about like perfecting them. And this is
35:15
Speaker 1: where the first smartphones started to come in. Yeah. I
35:18
Speaker 1: feel like this is when they were like, you know,
35:22
Speaker 1: everyone really loves the Internet, so let's put it in
35:24
Speaker 1: your pocket. Exactly because everybody was really super into the
35:28
Speaker 1: Internet in the late nineties. Everybody's like, I love this,
35:30
Speaker 1: asked Jeeves thing, he knows everything. I love Lotus notes, CC,
35:37
Speaker 1: your whatever it is that email application. Like people were
35:42
Speaker 1: into the Internet and like this idea of moving it
35:44
Speaker 1: onto your phone. It just just seemed like a good
35:46
Speaker 1: idea to everybody. Isn't it so weird that we can
35:49
Speaker 1: already have nostalgia for early Internet? Isn't it weird that
35:53
Speaker 1: there's entire groups of people who are now adults that
35:57
Speaker 1: have never lived in a world without the Internet. I know, Hey,
36:00
Speaker 1: actually hold on, I need to go get my web van.
36:02
Speaker 1: Order order van van that's going on today. They were
36:09
Speaker 1: just ahead of their time. Oh yeah, of course, poor guys.
36:13
Speaker 1: So UM. One of the big things that allowed like
36:16
Speaker 1: the third generation to move everything forward was there were
36:19
Speaker 1: um some people working on how to get basically faster speeds.
36:24
Speaker 1: And in the late nineties, UM there was something called
36:28
Speaker 1: the Third Generation Partnership Project, and they created two things
36:31
Speaker 1: that really kind of changed everything, uh, something called wide
36:35
Speaker 1: band code division multiple access and high speed packet access.
36:39
Speaker 1: And basically these were just ways that figured out how
36:42
Speaker 1: to take the information that you were sending, compress it
36:46
Speaker 1: and transfer it into smaller pieces, UM so that you
36:50
Speaker 1: could transfer more information faster, which is the whole point
36:54
Speaker 1: of of moving forward, generally from generation to generation figuring
36:58
Speaker 1: out how to move more information or data at faster speeds.
37:04
Speaker 1: Because the more you can do those two things, the
37:06
Speaker 1: more um connected the world can be, the faster everything moves,
37:11
Speaker 1: and that's just basically the steps that we just keep
37:14
Speaker 1: taking with each new generation. Yeah. So three G Broaderbound
37:18
Speaker 1: brought around a true mobile broadband network, and it really
37:22
Speaker 1: kind of set the stage for that first smartphone. Even
37:26
Speaker 1: though in the mid nineties we did have the Simon
37:28
Speaker 1: and we had p d A S and stuff like that.
37:31
Speaker 1: Simon was pretty awesome. Actually it's kind of cool. But
37:35
Speaker 1: did you look it up? Oh yeah, okay, I like
37:37
Speaker 1: the Simon. I mean it was genuinely the first smartphone
37:40
Speaker 1: and it was from had a touch screen for PiZZ sake, Yeah,
37:43
Speaker 1: I had an interactive touch screen screen. But in two
37:48
Speaker 1: thousand seven, with the launch of that first iPhone is
37:51
Speaker 1: when that first big splash was made because of a
37:56
Speaker 1: lot of reasons, but one of the biggest was the
37:57
Speaker 1: introduction of the app store and apps. And I remember
38:02
Speaker 1: the app I mean people still use their apps, but
38:05
Speaker 1: at first I remember just all of those dumb apps
38:08
Speaker 1: that everyone was just like, look at this super cool
38:10
Speaker 1: app that does this really dumb thing that you'll do
38:14
Speaker 1: once and then never do again. The laundryminder. Yeah. And now,
38:18
Speaker 1: like my apps, I have a lot of them, but
38:21
Speaker 1: they're all just useful interactive things like Venmo or my
38:27
Speaker 1: Sonos app or my Delta apps, stuff like that. It's
38:30
Speaker 1: none of them. Are I feel like that the early
38:33
Speaker 1: apps were just kind of dumb? Yeah, for sure. But
38:36
Speaker 1: I mean that's how technology happens. Like somebody has an idea.
38:39
Speaker 1: It's not the best idea, but it's a it's a
38:42
Speaker 1: proof of concept. And then other people say, oh, that's
38:45
Speaker 1: a great idea that in particular was a terrible idea,
38:49
Speaker 1: and you need to retire. But we're gonna take your
38:51
Speaker 1: idea and convert it into something that people actually want.
38:54
Speaker 1: That's how it happens, you know. That's how it happened
38:56
Speaker 1: with devices, That's how it happened with the networks. That's
38:59
Speaker 1: how I happened with app two. Should we take another break?
39:03
Speaker 1: All right, we'll take another break, and we'll introduce you
39:05
Speaker 1: to a little guy named for Gary right after this.
39:24
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, okay, we finally reached the present. Actually, sadly,
39:39
Speaker 1: because we entered four g um in about two thousand nine,
39:44
Speaker 1: we've been languishing in hell there since because we're technically
39:49
Speaker 1: still in the four g era, and the four g
39:52
Speaker 1: era didn't do a lot except increased speeds, and it
39:56
Speaker 1: increased speeds a lot. But that's really basically the finding
40:01
Speaker 1: um characteristic between four G and three G. Yeah, it
40:05
Speaker 1: was about ten times or is about ten times as
40:08
Speaker 1: fast as three G was. Uh. And what this brought
40:10
Speaker 1: about kind of the big thing it brought about, aside
40:14
Speaker 1: from just transferring pictures and stuff quicker, was you could
40:17
Speaker 1: actually finally stream HD uh, like live sports and HD
40:22
Speaker 1: movies and stuff like that, if you want to watch
40:25
Speaker 1: something like that on your phone, which I never have
40:27
Speaker 1: or want to, but a lot of people do for sure. UM.
40:30
Speaker 1: And the big technology associated with four G is called LTE,
40:34
Speaker 1: which stands for long Term Evolution. Didn't know UM and LTE,
40:41
Speaker 1: at least in the U S that's the big four
40:43
Speaker 1: G technology. But LTE basically runs on two kind of
40:48
Speaker 1: breakthroughs in data transfer technology. Ones called orthogonal frequency division
40:54
Speaker 1: multiplexing can get a Glavin please hey. And the other
40:59
Speaker 1: one is called MEMO multiple input multiple output, which makes
41:03
Speaker 1: a lot of sense because basically what it is is
41:06
Speaker 1: multiple antennas on your device, say your router or your
41:09
Speaker 1: phone or whatever, and it transfers data UH from the
41:14
Speaker 1: device and accepts data and coming to the device at
41:18
Speaker 1: the same time. It doesn't like switch back and forth.
41:21
Speaker 1: Like do you remember back in the nineties or early
41:23
Speaker 1: two thousand's when you could watch data transfer going on?
41:26
Speaker 1: If you had something uploading and downloading at the same time,
41:29
Speaker 1: you could watch your computers little um a task bar,
41:33
Speaker 1: that's not what it's called. What's the thing the bar
41:36
Speaker 1: that kind of grows star maybe status bar? Yeah, you
41:39
Speaker 1: could watch it flip between uploading and downloading. Well, that
41:43
Speaker 1: all went the way of the dinosaur when Memo became
41:46
Speaker 1: um prevalent or widespread, because you could do both at
41:50
Speaker 1: the same time without sacrificing speed, which made your transmission
41:54
Speaker 1: speeds a lot faster. Yeah. So Memo is the human
41:58
Speaker 1: centipede of cell phone technologies. I forgot all about that movie,
42:02
Speaker 1: Like I literally forgot in my head that that movie existed.
42:05
Speaker 1: And it was a good one too. I didn't see it,
42:07
Speaker 1: but when I saw multiple input, multiple output, that is
42:10
Speaker 1: the very first thing I thought of somehow, huh, oh,
42:13
Speaker 1: you should see it, for sure. I think every human
42:15
Speaker 1: alive should see Human Centipede at least one time. Every
42:18
Speaker 1: human over the age of eighteen. How about this, every
42:22
Speaker 1: human that has a phone? Oh boy, so Um, technically
42:28
Speaker 1: my daughter has a phone. I gave her my old
42:31
Speaker 1: phone just and took everything off but the camera so
42:33
Speaker 1: she could take pictures and stuff. Very cute. She's like,
42:36
Speaker 1: why is this cracked and you never fixed it? Uh no,
42:40
Speaker 1: it's not correct. It actually works pretty well. That's impressive.
42:44
Speaker 1: Uh I've seen I honestly, I've never seen a cell
42:46
Speaker 1: phone that is not in use anymore that doesn't have
42:48
Speaker 1: a crack screen. Oh. Really, well, you should come over
42:52
Speaker 1: some time and uh she'll take a picture of you. Okay,
42:55
Speaker 1: I think that's the deal. You can throw it down
42:57
Speaker 1: and break it, right, I would be now you're normally so.
43:03
Speaker 1: The big advantage of lt E four g l T
43:06
Speaker 1: T lt E, of course is capacity, and that is
43:11
Speaker 1: basically how many, um, how many calls you can serve
43:15
Speaker 1: at the same time. And that's a big problem, you know,
43:17
Speaker 1: depending on where you are. I remember, even um in
43:21
Speaker 1: recent trips in the past couple of years to New
43:23
Speaker 1: York and l A, thinking, why do you people even
43:27
Speaker 1: have smartphones? Because none of you can use them? It's
43:30
Speaker 1: so lame. How slow it is. DCS is pretty bad too, Actually,
43:35
Speaker 1: it's just really really slow because there's so many people
43:38
Speaker 1: all trying to use data, and I mean on a
43:42
Speaker 1: transmission frequency, like there's only so much bandwidth and if
43:47
Speaker 1: you you know, out in des Moines doesn't matter, Um,
43:50
Speaker 1: nothing matters in des Moines, really, but there's so few
43:54
Speaker 1: people who are trying to use it comparatively speaking that
43:57
Speaker 1: you know, you can have relatively good transmission rates. In
44:00
Speaker 1: New York they have a huge network, but there's so
44:03
Speaker 1: many people trying to use the network it once, it
44:05
Speaker 1: just drags the whole thing down, and everybody's Internet is
44:08
Speaker 1: really slow for now, for now, because I would suspect
44:12
Speaker 1: if it's not already going on, um, New York will
44:16
Speaker 1: be among the first cities that are ushered into the
44:19
Speaker 1: true bona fide age of five G. Yeah, so that
44:24
Speaker 1: the one big thing are actually two things that five
44:27
Speaker 1: G is gonna help with. We mentioned capacity. Uh, the
44:30
Speaker 1: other thing that four G improved upon that five gary's
44:33
Speaker 1: is really going to improve upon is lower latency. And
44:36
Speaker 1: latency is that delay when data is bouncing back and
44:39
Speaker 1: forth across the network and you want to you want
44:42
Speaker 1: to low latency. And four G l T E LTE
44:46
Speaker 1: has a latency about forty milliseconds real time is fifty milliseconds,
44:51
Speaker 1: and that's what they're hoping that those five garys can accomplish. Right.
44:56
Speaker 1: And so the big deal with five G is that
44:58
Speaker 1: it uses a completely different range of the spectrum, the
45:03
Speaker 1: broadband spectrum, right, So it uses between the thirty and
45:07
Speaker 1: three hundred giga hurts range um, and it's called the
45:10
Speaker 1: millimeter portion of the spectrum because the wave links between
45:15
Speaker 1: those ranges are about one millimeter to ten millimeters, So
45:19
Speaker 1: that's why they call it the millimeter wave portion of
45:21
Speaker 1: the spectrum. And because there's so much bandwidth between thirty
45:27
Speaker 1: and three hundred giga hurts um, you can have a
45:31
Speaker 1: channel that takes up something like eight hundred megahurts, right,
45:35
Speaker 1: that's a huge enormous channel. And because you have a
45:39
Speaker 1: huge enormous channel and you have a bunch of them,
45:41
Speaker 1: what that now allows is that huge that big next
45:45
Speaker 1: step forward of the same progression, which is transferring a
45:50
Speaker 1: whole bunch of information at really high speeds. Again, that's
45:55
Speaker 1: the progress of all telecommunications these days. That's where we're going.
45:58
Speaker 1: And so this five G change over to the millimeter
46:02
Speaker 1: wave spectrum is um is going to allow that. So
46:06
Speaker 1: we'll be going from what did you say like tyty
46:09
Speaker 1: millisecond latency to something like um less than one second
46:16
Speaker 1: for latency, which is that's it's like happening in real time. Basically,
46:21
Speaker 1: it's reality UM as if you were standing there watching
46:25
Speaker 1: something a foot away, it might actually even be faster
46:28
Speaker 1: than that. Yeah, So I guess the idea there is
46:31
Speaker 1: is you can you can send someone a a song
46:36
Speaker 1: and it you send it and they get it and
46:38
Speaker 1: it's done. Sure. Sure, if you really want to set
46:43
Speaker 1: your sights low, Yes, that is what it would do.
46:48
Speaker 1: It just sounded like a grandpa. I don't know what
46:49
Speaker 1: happened there. You can send a picture of your light
46:53
Speaker 1: phone to your neighbor and they'll get it immediately. The
46:58
Speaker 1: bad part, or that gets the drawback about those signals
47:01
Speaker 1: is they don't travel that far. They travel about eight
47:04
Speaker 1: hundred feet. So the idea with five G is uh
47:08
Speaker 1: is will have these big cell towers, but then there
47:10
Speaker 1: will also be thousands of little tiny while they're not tiny,
47:14
Speaker 1: but small low power transmitters um kind of all over
47:19
Speaker 1: the place, buildings on rooftops. I guess they'll climb pine
47:23
Speaker 1: trees and and nail them in those. But I think
47:26
Speaker 1: also remember our episode on the Internet of Things. How
47:29
Speaker 1: it's like all made up of sensors and transmitters and
47:31
Speaker 1: just stuff that's aboard everything. I think that those will
47:35
Speaker 1: also double as transmitters too, So it's kind of like
47:38
Speaker 1: you know those mesh networks that you can put together
47:40
Speaker 1: with your home router. I got one of those, okay,
47:43
Speaker 1: So I think it's basically that, but on like a
47:46
Speaker 1: national or global scale, where because of all these different
47:50
Speaker 1: sensors and interconnected wireless transmitters, we like everything will have that,
47:55
Speaker 1: which means everything will be connected, which means we'll be
47:57
Speaker 1: living amongst one big mesh, which means just walking into
48:01
Speaker 1: your kitchen will give you COVID nineteen. That's right, And
48:07
Speaker 1: I think in about thirty five cities right now they
48:09
Speaker 1: have the high band five G as opposed to the
48:13
Speaker 1: low band five G, which I think the low band
48:16
Speaker 1: is just sort of working off those four G LTE
48:19
Speaker 1: tours and the five the high band will be this
48:22
Speaker 1: this meshed network I guess, right where where everything is
48:26
Speaker 1: connected and because of that incredibly low latency where things
48:29
Speaker 1: just are communicating back and forth just faster than you
48:33
Speaker 1: can even describe it. Um, we'll have things like that
48:37
Speaker 1: genuinely connected Internet of things where everything is constantly monitoring
48:41
Speaker 1: everything else in the background, and our our world is
48:43
Speaker 1: perfect basically, which actually it sounds funny, but the Internet
48:47
Speaker 1: of things is going to be the thing that lays
48:49
Speaker 1: the groundwork for an intelligent AI that can run that
48:54
Speaker 1: Internet of things for us in the background, and that
48:57
Speaker 1: can control things like the weather where the amperature of
49:00
Speaker 1: the beach, the water at the ocean, like just stuff
49:03
Speaker 1: that we can't even begin to conceive of. That will
49:06
Speaker 1: lay the groundwork for that. On the shorter term, we're
49:09
Speaker 1: gonna have things like smart roads where your car is
49:12
Speaker 1: communicating with other cars so that you just aren't going
49:14
Speaker 1: to get in an accident because that low latency and
49:17
Speaker 1: ubiquitous connectivity means that that a car will never come
49:22
Speaker 1: in contact with another car because they're communicating with one
49:25
Speaker 1: another constantly while you're sitting there reading the paper traveling
49:28
Speaker 1: in your car. That's a that's good, that will happen
49:31
Speaker 1: very soon. That's probably a ten or fifteen year off thing.
49:35
Speaker 1: Or you'll just be sitting at home going, oh my god,
49:38
Speaker 1: Chuck just sent me a song. Oh wait, he sent
49:40
Speaker 1: me another song. He sent me another song. Yeah, Or
49:44
Speaker 1: augmented reality. There'll be another one. Remember we did an
49:46
Speaker 1: episode on that. Yeah, and I was very skeptical and
49:50
Speaker 1: always have been about a R and VR kind of
49:53
Speaker 1: overtaking the world. Uh. And there's an argument to be
49:56
Speaker 1: made that it hasn't yet because something like five G
49:59
Speaker 1: wasn't around and those data speeds weren't where they needed
50:02
Speaker 1: to be. But I'm still skeptical for the reasons I
50:04
Speaker 1: outlined to previously. I think we talked about that in
50:07
Speaker 1: the actual episode two, but we did. So you you
50:10
Speaker 1: mentioned about about um people being addicted to smartphones, and
50:15
Speaker 1: that's like, you know, that's a common concern. I think
50:18
Speaker 1: Nicholas car back in two thousand nine a really great
50:21
Speaker 1: Atlantic article. If you've never read it, go read it now.
50:24
Speaker 1: It's called a Google making is dumb leg article and
50:28
Speaker 1: that so that article he basically says, like, um, I
50:32
Speaker 1: can't remember if we did an episode on it or not,
50:34
Speaker 1: but basically he says, you know, we we have changed
50:37
Speaker 1: our brains the way we absorb information. It's much more shallow,
50:41
Speaker 1: it's much less deep. So yeah, maybe it is making
50:43
Speaker 1: a stupid That kind of taps into this idea that
50:46
Speaker 1: we've become addicted to our cell phones. Um, not so
50:49
Speaker 1: much that they're making a stupid but that they've actually
50:52
Speaker 1: kind of rewired our brains in a way so that
50:54
Speaker 1: we rely on them to essentially get happiness from that.
50:59
Speaker 1: We get it hits of dopamine from things like getting
51:02
Speaker 1: a text from somebody that we're hoping for, or hearing
51:05
Speaker 1: that we got an Instagram like basically everything you can
51:08
Speaker 1: get a push notification for. It's set up so that
51:11
Speaker 1: it maximizes whatever hit of dopamine it might release in
51:16
Speaker 1: your brain. And just on that very basic level, answers
51:20
Speaker 1: the question whether we're addicted to our cell phones or not,
51:23
Speaker 1: And the answer is absolutely yes. It's actually designed that way. Yeah.
51:28
Speaker 1: And I don't have any push notification set and I
51:32
Speaker 1: never I wasn't trying to make some stand against it.
51:35
Speaker 1: I just it never occurred to me that I would
51:38
Speaker 1: want to know when someone made a comment on an
51:41
Speaker 1: Instagram post or whatever people get notifications for, like I'll
51:45
Speaker 1: I'll see that stuff when I go to those apps,
51:47
Speaker 1: and it's fine, and I get my dopamine reward that way. Um.
51:52
Speaker 1: I just I mean, my cell phone just doesn't make
51:54
Speaker 1: any noise unless someone's calling me. Or texting me. Um.
51:59
Speaker 1: And in fact, I think people should hear what my
52:02
Speaker 1: text is. Can you text me real quick? Sure? What's
52:06
Speaker 1: your number? Jerk? And I'll just hold it up and
52:10
Speaker 1: here's my text tone. Okay, all right, here it comes next. Man.
52:23
Speaker 1: Did you hear that was that? Um? Dirk Benedict, No,
52:28
Speaker 1: that was me. That's pretty great going text man, but
52:32
Speaker 1: great man, Yeah, that's what I hear when a text
52:35
Speaker 1: comes through. Uh, and I hear ring, ring, ring ring,
52:40
Speaker 1: it's you saying ring ring, yes, in a in a
52:42
Speaker 1: British accent. I've got to figure that out because I
52:46
Speaker 1: have I have my ring tone on like the regular one,
52:48
Speaker 1: and I usually I just have my ringer off all
52:51
Speaker 1: the time because I don't like sounds coming from myself
52:53
Speaker 1: and um, but when it is on, it's like jacked
52:57
Speaker 1: all the way up because I forget to turn it
53:00
Speaker 1: down and say I'm mowing the lawn or something like that.
53:02
Speaker 1: And you may you may like jumped out of her
53:05
Speaker 1: skin yesterday and finally was like, okay, I'm I'm actually
53:08
Speaker 1: trembling here. Can we please come up with another ring
53:11
Speaker 1: tone for you? So we went over and came up
53:13
Speaker 1: with a much more peaceful one. Um, it's just a
53:16
Speaker 1: normal ring tone, but it's like, you know, very tranquil.
53:19
Speaker 1: It's not like that ringing sound, so it should be
53:21
Speaker 1: all good. Now I'm happy to report everybody. Yeah, I've
53:24
Speaker 1: got text, man, I've got ring ring And then the
53:26
Speaker 1: only other custom when I have is for Emily. Um,
53:30
Speaker 1: I just got her to record her yelling baby, so
53:34
Speaker 1: whenever a text or a call comes in from her,
53:37
Speaker 1: I know it's her. Very nice and so's a ing tones.
53:41
Speaker 1: Those are great ring tones, Chuck. But just to kind
53:44
Speaker 1: of put a button, as they say in Silicon Valley
53:47
Speaker 1: on the dopamine hit from your brain at that end
53:51
Speaker 1: of itself is an entirely different podcast. I promise, I
53:54
Speaker 1: vow we will take up some date because it's definitely interesting.
53:57
Speaker 1: It's worth looking into in depth. But in meantime, just
54:01
Speaker 1: look up say Tristan Harris and some of the articles
54:03
Speaker 1: that were written on him in the last couple of
54:05
Speaker 1: years when he was making the news cycle, and it
54:07
Speaker 1: will be a pretty good entree into that subject. If
54:09
Speaker 1: it floats your boat and you're wondering why you can't
54:12
Speaker 1: stop looking at your phone even if you want to. Yeah,
54:16
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, that's mobile phones. Everybody take it
54:18
Speaker 1: or leave it. It was free, so just take it
54:21
Speaker 1: and stop complaining. I said, stop complaining. It's time for
54:25
Speaker 1: listener mail, which also is free. I'm gonna call this
54:31
Speaker 1: UH stalking us, but not really. Hey, guys, been listening
54:35
Speaker 1: to a couple of years, and it randomly happened upon
54:39
Speaker 1: UH your show one particularly boring day at work, and
54:41
Speaker 1: I was hooked. Your funny, charming way of explaining sometimes
54:44
Speaker 1: quote boring topics got me through a rough time in
54:47
Speaker 1: my personal life and work much happier now with both.
54:51
Speaker 1: Although my new job, I don't have as much time
54:53
Speaker 1: to listen. I just want to say thanks for being
54:55
Speaker 1: those familiar faces during a crappy time. But I was
54:58
Speaker 1: listening to the insidious abuse of stalking and I had
55:00
Speaker 1: to giggle myself. As I listen to you guys every day,
55:03
Speaker 1: I feel as if I know you quite well and
55:05
Speaker 1: couldn't help but stock you both on social media. Chuck
55:08
Speaker 1: Welcome to Instagram. Thank you Chuck the podcaster on Instagram.
55:13
Speaker 1: I hope, I hope you don't think I'm a creep,
55:15
Speaker 1: but it's nice to see a glimpse into your personal lives.
55:18
Speaker 1: I think That's what Instagram is all about, right there,
55:20
Speaker 1: for look into my personal life, creeps a little peek.
55:24
Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to your book coming out in November.
55:26
Speaker 1: Although slightly pissed I can't get the pre order post
55:31
Speaker 1: in the UK yet. I think we just addressed that
55:33
Speaker 1: Nat head of this episode, she's drunk, slightly drunk that
55:40
Speaker 1: she can't get it. Uh, and can I ask once
55:42
Speaker 1: a pandemic is over, you guys come back to England.
55:44
Speaker 1: I'd love to take my dad and sister to see
55:46
Speaker 1: you guys live. Yes, absolutely, you can see us probably
55:49
Speaker 1: four or five years from now, and she says, cheers, Nat.
55:54
Speaker 1: Ps keep those pet picks coming on Instagram. Nice Nat,
55:59
Speaker 1: thanks a lot, Um. We definitely will do that. What
56:02
Speaker 1: are you at, Chuck the podcaster at Instagram? Chuck the podcaster,
56:05
Speaker 1: I'm at josh Um Clark. So you can find us both.
56:09
Speaker 1: You can find our pets, you can find a little
56:11
Speaker 1: peek into our lives. I'm enjoying it. That too is
56:14
Speaker 1: free as as well. Uh and again much appreciated. NAT
56:18
Speaker 1: will definitely be over there in the UK again someday
56:21
Speaker 1: and Uh. In the meantime, if you want to get
56:23
Speaker 1: in touch with us, like Nat did. You can send
56:25
Speaker 1: us an email, wrap it up spanking on the bottom,
56:28
Speaker 1: and send it off to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio
56:31
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of
56:37
Speaker 1: iHeart Radios. How Stuff works from More podcasts for my
56:39
Speaker 1: heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
56:42
Speaker 1: or where every you listen to your favorite shows.