I can hear the 20somethings in the audience scratching their heads: "Who's Mary Meeker?" Back in the '90s, investment banks' Internet analysts were superstars, viewed as oracles and rainmakers. In 1999, Meeker, Morgan Stanley's lead Internet analyst, got a profile in the New Yorker. The text is not online, but I distinctly remember how it chronicled Meeker's nonstop activity. The only time she was still was when she boarded an airplane, closed her eyes, and slept through the flight. Could she have stayed awake, had she known she could achieve download speeds of 989 kilobits per second, with a latency of 108 milliseconds, for the low, low price of $12.95 a flight?

Inflight connections, currently on a handful of flights, will rapidly go from novelty to necessity. Bosses will expect workers to log on nonstop; why shouldn't they? Even on leisure trips, compulsive connectors will go online out of sheer habit. I recently remarked to a friend, "Planes are for sleeping." That's before I got onto Gogo. Alas, poor Mary; even soaring above the clouds, there will be no rest for the weary.

Did you catch it? Asha claims that her network — presumably run by the Linksys router — is called "Geeking Out." But the shot of her Apple laptop shows that she's connected to a computer-to-computer network — most likely a wireless link to Asha's iMac, which can easily be configured to broadcast its Internet connnection via Wi-Fi.

Much easier than configuring a Linksys router, and a great ad for Apple technology — so easy, even a trust-funder can use it! As a promotion for Cisco, Asha's video utterly fails. We won't even get into her claim to have "wireless speakers," when the wire housings on the wall are obviously visible.

Remind us, what's the point of a celebrity endorsement? Ah yes — to have some of the endorser's qualities rub off on the product. If Cisco wants to be known for a glossy surface hiding technical ineptitude, it's found its star in Asha.

Philadelphia was a particularly interesting choice because it's the corporate home of Comcast. Here in San Francisco, the plan to build a citywide wireless network was initially opposed by the telco giant, along with AT&T, as the two companies feared it threatened their duopoly. Turned out they had little to be afraid of — between Comcast's influence in City Hall and villainously-coiffed God-mayor Gavin Newsom's inability to understand the political process beyond publicity, the combined powers of Google and Earthlink couldn't get anything done (and publicly mocking political opposition certainly didn't help).

Wi-Fi is simply bad technology for large-scale wireless connectivity. The microwave spectrum the technology uses can't cover large distances omni-directionally, and everything from humidity to trees interrupt the signal. And those problems are compounded by the difficulty in building a network infrastructure to feed all those access points with enough bandwidth to satsify thousands of users at any given time. Again, expanding fiber optic networks makes much more sense, because a bunch of wireless routers in a mesh network does you no good unless they can actually connect to an Internet backbone at dozens if not hundreds of points.

Having lived in the Bay Area since the turn of the century, I've actually noticed a decrease in Wi-Fi availability, mostly thanks to individuals who've started to lock down their access points and businesses that have tired of freeloaders. By the time Philadelphia and San Francisco were busy trying to build out citywide systems, the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard was already getting old, while cell network provides were introducing 3G data connections. Politics doomed such projects from the start, and now obsolescence will finish them.

What was once the technological pride of Phildelphia is now a failed dream on its last legs. Meanwhile, I can't get a fiber optic connection if I wanted one (and I do, desperately). Had we been listening to San Francisco Supervisor Tom Ammiano instead of mayor Newsom years ago, maybe San Franciscans would be getting the true broadband speeds countries in Asia and Europe enjoy. (Photo by Bob Jagendorf)

With just a few dozen access points and coverage for some public housing projects planned, nor at speeds as snappy as the free fiber optic connections the non-profit Internet Archive is providing to a new public housing development. Meanwhile, along the Peninsula, MetroFi's routers will go dark over the coming weeks in Valley hubs like Cupertino, which can now chalk up the city's second failed attempt at a public-private partnership to bring free Wi-Fi to residents. (Photo by AP/Eric Risberg)

I have had health challenges, and my body cannot handle wifi...it gives me headaches and makes me very sick. I would be unable to go to the store, shop. I have enough problems being limited in my travels, it is outrageous that a place so environmentally conscious would create this in our/my hometown. In Europe they are much more advanced than us, and there wifi is not allowed in cities in the European commonwealth.

Fon's goal was to distribute enough Fon routers to create a local network of Wi-Fi hotspots. But Fon's plan for critical mass was upstaged by Joselito's critical ass. Cher-ish finished off the night with a bar-stopping performance and outfit she stitched herself. I thought about asking her to make me one, but I don't have the package to pull it off. Check out the rest of the photos.

Photos by Randal Alan Smith