Examining the Impact of 6G Telecommunications on Society:
With greater global connectivity, the case for 6G telecommunications has become more apparent than ever before. The generations of wireless cellular technology (or the Gs) have been incrementing every 10 years: 1G prior to 1990, 2G in 1990, 3G in 2000, 4G in 2010, and 5G in 2020. We expect 6G to roll out in 2030.
[...] The pace of technological development is now swifter than ever, but societal implications often become afterthoughts.
[...] In the lead-up to announcing the SDGs, Jeffrey D. Sachs—while he was special advisor to the U.N. secretary-general—proposed in April 2015 an integrated vision for sustainable development. The integrated approach would advance a "holistic vision of systems analysis, where we have to understand how natural, technological, and sociopolitical systems interact," Sachs said.
[...] A recent example that illustrates the point was the rollout of 5G in 2020. It required the installation of cellphone towers or masts. Because community members did not understand the benefits of the installations or were not sufficiently consulted, several of the towers were not renewed. Some even were set on fire. With fast advancements in AI expected thanks to 6G, the fear of technology and what it might or might not do continues to be discussed in many parts of the world.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by crafoo on Tuesday January 17, @08:19PM (2 children)
the tech might be awesome but if people perceive it as being used to make their lives more confined, more miserable for no payoff... yeah. why not set the towers on fire.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18, @09:13AM (1 child)
instead of waiting for towers to solve their problems, perhaps people could... turn that shit off, read a book, drop some THC. the universe is out there.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 18, @07:22PM
The universe is out there, but it does not have 6G coverage.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bart9h on Tuesday January 17, @08:19PM (3 children)
I fail to see how 6G will advance AI. Is it me, or the author of this article, that is clueless?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday January 17, @08:34PM
6G is expected to enable AI avatars to become autonomous, wandering everywhere with sufficient connectivity to their actual processing clouds.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday January 17, @08:51PM
I guess with enough bandwidth and low enough latency, it should be possible to run the AIs server-side to enable a SaaS business model that isn't viable when run client-side (due to reversing or piracy / users realizing it's crap or discriminatory...).
compiling...
(Score: 5, Funny) by progo on Tuesday January 17, @09:05PM
6G will enable AI in the same way that 5G brought the wide-spread adoption of remote surgery.
I myself just got LASIK eye surgery in a city hospital conducted by my surgeon who has recently moved to Costa Rica.
I still have one eye left.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday January 17, @09:53PM (1 child)
Inane TikTok videos will download faster than ever before while Google harvest ever more personal data from your device at the same time without any detectable slowdown.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18, @09:09AM
same as it ever was
(Score: 4, Interesting) by istartedi on Tuesday January 17, @11:01PM (1 child)
Are those Imperial or metric Gs? Hah-ha, only serious. Yeah, "generations" but that's kind of meaningless insofar as not every generation of something is equal in progress.
So some quick googling:
1G -- analog, voice only (pre-cellular is sometimes called 0G).
2G -- digital (as are all later standards), up to 48 kB/s.
3G -- Minimum 144 kbit/s, up to 14 Mb/s in later releases with compatible devices.
4G -- 100 Mb/s high mobility, 1Gbps for stationary applications.
5G -- 50 - 1000 Mb/s
This is just a quick Wiki rundown summary. I'm sure there are a *lot* of devils in the details, but once you get to the point where you can stream videos on your phone, it seems like bandwidth isn't really lacking and you're going for other things like number of channels, latency, reliability and range that are hard to cover in a quick whipped-up summary like this where I'm really just asking the question of myself out loud seriously for the first time.
Would love to hear insights from those more in the know. At any rate, I'm straining to ask what 5G is for at times, let alone 6G. At what point is a technology, you know, kind of done for a while and characteristic of an era--the way analog TV was essentially unchanged for decades before digital finally killed it.
If we ever broke the speed of light, that'd be the real revolution. Imagine playing zero latency FPS games with Mars Colony.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by aafcac on Tuesday January 17, @11:47PM
Apart from trying to sell people new devices, I fail to see why we need so many generations. They shouldn't be still upping the speed at this point, they should be trying to fix the reliability and efficiency of the signal. The higher end 3G signal was more than enough for the things that people might reasonably expect to use a handheld device for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18, @03:11AM (1 child)
If we can't even get wide bandwidth terrestrial networking, what are they going to use for backhaul,
magic unicorn farts?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18, @03:30AM
> what are they going to use for backhaul,
Same imaginary network that is going to power all the new houses with electric heat pumps (with resistive backup when its too cold at night) and all the electric cars charging overnight.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 18, @03:35AM (1 child)
> analog TV was essentially unchanged for decades before digital finally killed it.
And the only reason it changed was the channels filled up, so the corporations squatting on the
licenses needed a way to create more channels.
Unfortunately the market for their extra channels collapsed with the rise of the Internet.
boo hoo
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday January 18, @07:32PM
Digital TV didn't kill TV. Reality TV killed TV. Massive amounts of cheap to produce low quality content by the shovel full on all channels. Then there were Marathons -- where you would binge watch an old tv series in a fifteen hour time span without restroom breaks. But at least you were at home where you could wear Depends.
Then there were bugs on the content. You're watching an episode . . . drat! a commercial! . . . now after the commercial and your program continues, animated characters walk out all over the screen advertising some other show on this network, obscuring the content of what you are trying to watch right now. So on that other show would they be obscuring that content to advertise what you are watching right now? Every one of their programs annoys you to watch a different program on their network?
The Internet and video games both suddenly become more interesting and entertaining than the crap on cable TV. They did it to themselves.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...