The whole of Halifax - by no means the urban centre of the country - seemed wireless. Starbucks had blistering hotspots; fast enough for a hiccup-free video call to my wife in Melbourne. Even poky ''mom-and-pop'' cafes had wireless free with even the cheapest purchase. Most helpfully, the hotel offered Wi-Fi: it was just part of the package, along with bed, complimentary shampoos and water-wasting water closet.

Yet here I am in Sydney, arguably Australia's financial and business capital, and my hotel charges extra for internet access. And no small charge: $10 an hour, at the highest rate. I pay Starbucks $3 and they give me Wi-Fi, a power outlet to charge, and a middling coffee. I pay my hotel almost $200 for a room and they cannot throw me an internet bone?

It makes no sense to think of Wi-Fi as a special item, and many travellers don't. More than a third of respondents surveyed by market researcher TNS said internet access ought to be included in the room price. This percentage will only rise.

My hotel quietly acknowledges this with its IT set-up: their employees have Wi-Fi because it is the most convenient way to organise internet access for staff with laptops and tablets. They treat as ordinary for their staff what they price as a luxury for their guests.

This is, like the price of much airport food, a racket: it makes an ordinary service into a luxury. And because customers are out of their milieu, they pay extra. (For the record, I did not.)

A common reply to technological complaints is: ''Calm down. Can't you just sit back and recognise how far we've come?'' There is some truth to this.

When I was a boy, the internet was an unknown boffin experiment in the United States. Telephones were plugged into walls and had clicking dials. Cameras had hinges and winders for rolls of film. Desktop computers blinked at you with a letter, colon and forward slash. To run programs, you typed ''run''.

Nowadays, my entry level smartphone is faster and more powerful than my old Commodore 64. In the past decade, it has become normal for me to access high-speed internet and process wirelessly, in a few minutes in a cafe, more information than my father's Control Data supercomputer processed in an hour.

So, here I am in the gobsmacking Buck Rogers future, and I'm whining about the price. But innovation does not magically erase the need for criticism. Most technology is rightly unnoticed, often unconsciously, as we use it. Not because it is easily designed and manufactured, but because technology is a means to an end. It is invisible because it intertwines with our intentions; or our needs and wants.

In other words, technology is something we are often supposed to ignore - until it fails, or simply is not there. We can be impressed by scientists and engineers, or annoyed by hotels' dodgy service. We can be more or less knowledgeable about gears or circuits. But the technology itself does not warrant grateful amazement.

Every new generation of tools becomes commonplace; every ''revolution'' becomes the status quo. And so it should. That is how it is best used, and how innovation is encouraged: against a background of ordinary use.

Having said this, my attitude - and that of many travellers - is not one of jaded cynicism but of informed criticism. We are not unaware of the skill and labour required to design, manufacture, distribute and maintain telecommunications networks. We are, instead, rightly noting that provision and pricing have not kept up with demand; that there is a mismatch between public expectation and private service.

It is not a rejection of scientific and engineering excellence to note that a hotel is being canny.

More philosophically, the idea of sitting back in grateful amazement at networked computers is odd. While some technologies hint at the sublime - aeroplanes, skyscrapers - they are not themselves deserving of awe. It is existence itself that evokes the sublime; it is a feeling for vast, encompassing being.

Let us not mistake a hotspot for a sacred site; a router for a luminescent poplar.

Damon Young is a philosopher and author. His latest book, Philosophy in the Garden, was published last year. Twitter: @damonayoung