For the Love of Technology.

Technology is a wonderful thing when it works. For example, these days I call my parents on my iPhone using Skype. This works about 90% of the time. But when you sit back and think of what's actually happening when I do that, it's quite incredible. Example: Me calling my mom with Skype on iPhone.

1. From my iPhone, The call goes through the wireless network here at work.
   
2. The traffic goes through the network, ending up in Japan (my work's outbound gateway)
3. The traffic then goes over the Internet, through one of the cables connecting North America to Japan
4. From there it's routed through to Skype's servers somewhere in the continental US.
   
5. Skype's servers route the traffic internally to a server that's local to my mom's Long Island area code
6. That server makes a phone call to my mom's home line, connecting us.
   

So using 3 different connection technologies (wireless, wired and phone) over at LEAST 2 major fiber cables undersea, through the entirety of the US to the New York phone system so that I can chat with mom. And somehow they manage to deal with all the variability built into each of those networks, to give us a conversation with less delay than I remember having the first time I called my mom out of country.

Of course, occasionally this wonderful world of technology stuffs up, like today when I was trying to wish Bruce a happy birthday, but generally, it's pretty fantastic.

Oh and all this essentially free, riding on existing services I already pay for.