  How many radio stations or TV stations does your tablet receive that don't come through its wireless connection to the internet? How much of anything not in its immediate vicinity can it access by any means other than its wireless modem?  ("GPS" in most tablets is a function of the wireless/cell tower triangulations instead of actually listening to the global positioning satellites.)  I've never said that multi-mode devices aren't possible, only that we haven't seen any.  <More later>  My tablet has a separate GPS. The point I'm making is that multimode devices aren't all that hard to make in our own world. And we actually don't have access to a perpetual energy source, or to indestructible materials. Nor do individuals in our world have the ability to change the molecular architecture of materials. With all those things, the AoL could easily have made multimode devices to put ours to shame. No reason the Glass Columns can't be one such.  