The Columnist Manifesto

B has a new Apple laptop which indicates that there are 13 wireless internet networks whose signals are reaching us as we sip coffee at Grandma Moses, our favorite coffee house.

We don't subscribe to any wireless networks at home. Our reasoning? Crazy enough as it now sounds, it was because we didn't want to have wireless signals bombarding our house. Of course, now we receive about 7 different wireless network signals at home.

Maybe all these signals are perfectly benign. It's interesting how our society rushes headlong into new technologies always giving them the benefit of the doubt that they are safe and not cancer-producing. And now, of course, we all wonder how we could possibly have lived our lives in the past without constant and ubiquitous mobile internet access.

And what if they wireless signals turn out to be a health hazard?