Most technologies are born and either survive or die. UWB (Ultra Wide Band) seems determined to do it differently, by constantly reincarnating itself and never quite getting there. It’s currently at another inflection point in its serendipitous life cycle and it’s not at all obvious whether it will survive this one.
I was recently reading Kurt Vonnegut’s novel The Sirens of Titan
, where I discovered that he had invented an acronym which struck me as remarkably apposite – the Universal Will to Believe. In his case it’s probably nothing to do with wireless (although it could be), but is the mysterious power source in Tralfamodorean spaceships that is harnessed to power the Martian fleet of flying saucers. Obscure power sources for space travel seem to be a recurring theme in science fiction, as Douglas Adams created something remarkably similar a few decades later, with his Infinite Probability Drive in the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
. And recurring themes and reinvention are eerily common in the curious world of UWB.
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