Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking. Welcome to Forward Thinking, the show that looks
Speaker 1: at the future and says, hey, now you're doing I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm not going after that now. I'm Lauren
Speaker 1: voc Obama, and I'm Joe McCormick. And we wanted to
Speaker 1: talk a bit about communication and speed of communication and
Speaker 1: throughput of information because these are different terms and often
Speaker 1: we can easily confuse them, mostly because of just the
Speaker 1: terminology we tend to use when discussing the stuff casually, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know, my internet speed is terrible. It's really really slow.
Speaker 1: And what we mean by that usually is that the
Speaker 1: amount of information we are able to get over a
Speaker 1: given span of time is less than what we would like.
Speaker 1: That's that's generally speaking, what we mean when we say
Speaker 1: my internet slow. Yeah, I mean we mean this web
Speaker 1: page is taking forever to load, like four seconds. It's terrible. Though.
Speaker 1: It's funny because there are a lot of different reasons
Speaker 1: web page could be taking forever to load, right, it
Speaker 1: should be a problem. It could be that the server
Speaker 1: is slow, or it could be a problem with the
Speaker 1: information getting from the server. To you, right, there could
Speaker 1: be some problems with switches or routers between the server
Speaker 1: and your computer. It could be problem with your computer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The one the one thing that you can rest assured
Speaker 1: is that those uh, those ones and zeros are traveling
Speaker 1: as fast as they possibly can through whichever given pathway
Speaker 1: is available to them. So we really want to kind
Speaker 1: of illustrate the difference between speed and through put. And
Speaker 1: I have kind of a an analogy that I'm going
Speaker 1: to try and and and clumsily set up to sort
Speaker 1: of explain this. So let's imagine that the three of
Speaker 1: us live in three different cities, and they're very far apart, uh,
Speaker 1: and we would like to occasionally visit one another. Now,
Speaker 1: in each of our cities, we have these massive highways
Speaker 1: that have maybe there are ten lanes across, and they
Speaker 1: allow thousands of cars on them at any given time,
Speaker 1: and they can all be traveling at top speed safely
Speaker 1: because of the way these highways are designed. They're probably
Speaker 1: autonomous cars then, right, clearly sure. And then but the
Speaker 1: problem is that when you start traveling, when you get about, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe a third of the way from
Speaker 1: my city to Lawrence City, that highway suddenly narrows down
Speaker 1: to one lane, and so those ten lanes are now
Speaker 1: compacted into one lane. And it's not that the cars
Speaker 1: have that any individual car would have to move slower
Speaker 1: down that lane. Is that you now have to compress
Speaker 1: all that traffic down into the one lane of traffic.
Speaker 1: And you can't have two cars in super position on
Speaker 1: each other, because physics don't work that way, y'all, and
Speaker 1: you would end up having a big old smash up
Speaker 1: on the highway. So that's a bottleneck. That's where we
Speaker 1: now are going to see traffic slowed down, even though
Speaker 1: that lead car would still be able to continue moving
Speaker 1: at the same speed it was on when the highway
Speaker 1: had ten lanes wide. And if the same thing is
Speaker 1: true between Lauren City and Joe City and Joe City
Speaker 1: and my City, then traveling between the two we would
Speaker 1: experience some slow down, yea, even though we have these
Speaker 1: hyper efficient cars. Yeah there, yeah, well yeah, And we
Speaker 1: can see that difference in terms of information. And I
Speaker 1: don't know if you've heard about this thing called fiber
Speaker 1: to the home, right um, fiber to the home is
Speaker 1: trying to rectify what's a really common bottleneck in in
Speaker 1: the communication grid that it may be that the backbone,
Speaker 1: you know that the public uh wire that if it's
Speaker 1: optical fiber or something like that. The cable, the cable
Speaker 1: that's um carrying the information. It has a lot of throughput,
Speaker 1: but suddenly it needs to branch off and get to
Speaker 1: your house. And you've got some dinky little, you know,
Speaker 1: rolled up piece of tinfoil. It's transmitting from the optical
Speaker 1: fiber to your home. Someone who gets the message and
Speaker 1: walks to your front door and knocks on your door,
Speaker 1: hands you the message. Then you has to wait for
Speaker 1: you to send the reply. They walk back, and in
Speaker 1: that case, it's it's almost like, well, what's the point
Speaker 1: of the you know, right right, you have this incredibly
Speaker 1: fast connection to the node, the network node that's in
Speaker 1: your neighborhood, but then from the node to your home
Speaker 1: it's a much slower connection, so it doesn't really matter. Uh.
Speaker 1: The same thing is true if you have a really
Speaker 1: fast connection to your home, but one of the big
Speaker 1: connections on the internet, the backbone, if it hasn't already
Speaker 1: been outfitted with with fiber, with optic optic fiber or
Speaker 1: fiber optics. I should say, if I brought a cable. Then, uh,
Speaker 1: while you could send things and get things really quickly
Speaker 1: from your node, once it hit that it would start
Speaker 1: to slow down anyway. So really we're looking at the
Speaker 1: Internet as a as an entire unified system. It's kind
Speaker 1: of interesting to me because one of the things that's
Speaker 1: been the news a lot over the last couple of
Speaker 1: years is is that Google in the United States, in
Speaker 1: Kansas City rolled out the Google Fiber hood. So they
Speaker 1: were making these these neighborhoods rolling out this Google Fiber
Speaker 1: that would give you a one gig a bit per
Speaker 1: second download speed and nearly as fast upload speed. In fact,
Speaker 1: the download and upload speeds are almost the same, which
Speaker 1: is unheard of. I mean, in most networks you get
Speaker 1: a fraction of the upload speed that you get with download.
Speaker 1: And part of that is because uh, you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're trying the networks are trying to save this bandwidth.
Speaker 1: This this is for some networks a a limited amount
Speaker 1: of capacity that they have to handle network traffic, and
Speaker 1: this helps cut that down. Because most people don't upload
Speaker 1: that much stuff that if you are a private citizen
Speaker 1: uploading a lot of data, what are you probably doing
Speaker 1: well these days you might be uploading just videos that
Speaker 1: you're taking and you want to put them on Facebook,
Speaker 1: you know, back in back back then, the earlier, it's
Speaker 1: the assumption would be more likely and you were feeding
Speaker 1: on you know, you were here's every metallic album ever made. Yeah,
Speaker 1: to rival the amount of that people are downloading on
Speaker 1: you know, streaming television or something. Sure, yeah, yeah, well
Speaker 1: ten years ago, I would say that pirating would definitely
Speaker 1: be one of the concerns if you're uploading a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff these days, because there's so many options to
Speaker 1: host media from people legitimately that you could have people
Speaker 1: stepping it up, and there's so many products out there
Speaker 1: that allow you to capture video and upload video, and
Speaker 1: you know, YouTube is allowing you to put up as
Speaker 1: much stuff as you like. Then there's really the capacity
Speaker 1: to actually upload a lot more than you used to.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately the actual Internet service providers haven't necessarily caught
Speaker 1: up to that. So still with a lot of I
Speaker 1: s p s you get a pretty decent download speed,
Speaker 1: but a kind of weedy upload speed. In comparison, Google
Speaker 1: Fiber was a little bit different, like this gig a
Speaker 1: bit down. It was matched by all us to gig
Speaker 1: a bit up. So one question people have had is
Speaker 1: what would you use that for? I mean, what that's
Speaker 1: so much data in such a short amount of time. Well, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: right right now, the answer is kind of uh, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but uh, but you know, it's that's not
Speaker 1: to say that that's always going to be the case.
Speaker 1: Just because we can't imagine it now doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: it's going to be like that forever. But there's when
Speaker 1: it comes to technology. I mean, if there's a free launch,
Speaker 1: people are going to find a way to eat it.
Speaker 1: Well and right now. There was an article that was
Speaker 1: on Slate that was written by Farad Manjou who said that,
Speaker 1: you know, in his experience of using it, he actually
Speaker 1: went to Kansas City, um and tried it out. By
Speaker 1: the way, the Kansas Kansas City for those who don't
Speaker 1: know who people who aren't in the United States aren't
Speaker 1: familiar with the geography. It's actually in two There are
Speaker 1: two states that have a Kansas City, and Google has
Speaker 1: rolled out fiber to both of them. So so yeah,
Speaker 1: you're when I say Kansas City, I'm talking about both
Speaker 1: both Kansas cities. But uh uh Manju went to Kansas
Speaker 1: City to try this out and said that he didn't
Speaker 1: have any problem accessing anything like he could he could
Speaker 1: stream several videos all at the same time. But then
Speaker 1: when he went home he had a twenty two megabit
Speaker 1: per second connection, which is far smaller than the one
Speaker 1: gigabit per second, you know, far less throughput, but was
Speaker 1: still not having any trouble with the videos. So he said, well, really,
Speaker 1: everything I would do, I can kind of do already,
Speaker 1: So what what's the advantage unless you're trying to test
Speaker 1: the limits? And and even then again, you are limited
Speaker 1: not just by the speed that's coming into your home,
Speaker 1: but the speed that's going across the core of the network.
Speaker 1: On i triple ease website, there's an article written by
Speaker 1: Dennis Weller and Bill Woodcock that point out that there
Speaker 1: are Internet exchange points. This is like the core of
Speaker 1: the Internet. This is where the major traffic is switching
Speaker 1: across that uh that don't have this fiber optic cable yet.
Speaker 1: That the rollout was going really heavily in the ninety
Speaker 1: nine indies, but then investments started to peter off towards
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteen nineties, and so some parts
Speaker 1: of the core of the Internet never got upgraded. So
Speaker 1: if you if you don't have the core of the
Speaker 1: Internet covered, then uh, you know, again, that's a bottleneck
Speaker 1: that's going to call if there's some traffic that needs
Speaker 1: to go through that point, you don't really benefit from
Speaker 1: that amazing throughput. And in fact, that was one of
Speaker 1: the points that people have made that it's not that
Speaker 1: Google Fiber isn't fast enough, it's that the rest of
Speaker 1: the Internet isn't fast enough to really take advantage of it. However,
Speaker 1: it's a good thing to have sort of as a
Speaker 1: future proofing system. And even then, we know, I mean
Speaker 1: back in the day, I remember when I had a
Speaker 1: two fifty six megabyte hard drive and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: there's no way I would ever fill this. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: be upgrade again. But we learned, you know, we will
Speaker 1: find ways of meeting that capacity over time. It just
Speaker 1: might take a while before that happens. But well, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that we will always find ways to to
Speaker 1: fill capacity. I think because if you think about all
Speaker 1: the ways that we used to send information that are
Speaker 1: really sort of slowly getting transferred to the Internet. That
Speaker 1: we we used to send letters in the mail all
Speaker 1: the time, we still do that some, but a lot
Speaker 1: of that email. Now we used to you know, get
Speaker 1: our TV from cable or from broadcast. Lots of people
Speaker 1: still do that, but a lot of people are just
Speaker 1: watching TV on the internet. Yeah, there's an increasing number
Speaker 1: of people. Yeah, they hit in a December who plus
Speaker 1: hit like thirty million subscribers. Yeah, so it's yeah, just
Speaker 1: quite we're offloading from all these traditional routes of of
Speaker 1: information to to the single grid basically. Yeah, no, that's
Speaker 1: that's a good point, and it's uh, it's interesting to
Speaker 1: me to see what the difference is between the average
Speaker 1: download speed and the Google fiber download speed. So remember
Speaker 1: I talking about the Google fibers one gigabit per second. Now,
Speaker 1: according to the Slate article, uh, it would say that
Speaker 1: that the average American download speed is closer to six
Speaker 1: point seven megabits per second, which, uh is pretty lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's incredibly low. I mean it's it's tiny
Speaker 1: little fraction of the one gigabit per second. Other other
Speaker 1: outlets have estimated a different speed. There was one called
Speaker 1: net Index that says it's more like seventeen point seven
Speaker 1: one megabits per second. It all depends on how you
Speaker 1: measure those speeds. It's usually a sampling kind of like
Speaker 1: Nielsen ratings, right, except for Internet speeds. You you take
Speaker 1: the sample of what these computer speeds are, or the
Speaker 1: data transmission rates I guess I should say, and then
Speaker 1: you sort of average that out across the United States. So, um,
Speaker 1: it's interesting to me because the net Index also ranks countries.
Speaker 1: Uh and and uh can you guess where what what? Well,
Speaker 1: they call it a country, but what city? What city
Speaker 1: has the fastest download connection according to net Index, keeping
Speaker 1: in mind that other companies have different links. Wait wait, wait,
Speaker 1: you said it's a city and they're Now the Pope
Speaker 1: does not have a direct line to the internet. You know,
Speaker 1: you have not seen the Pope's chambers. All right, Well
Speaker 1: that's not the one chamber is totally Texas master control
Speaker 1: programs of computers everywhere. Yeah. No, this is Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: I'm taking it, putting out of your misery. It's Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: That's what they listed. So Hong Kong at they have
Speaker 1: an average of forty four point thirty nine megabets per
Speaker 1: second download speed. The others in the top five include
Speaker 1: Singapore with thirty eight point seven five megabets per second
Speaker 1: Lithuania with thirty eight point seven three, Taiwan on with
Speaker 1: thirty four point eight five, and South Korea brings up
Speaker 1: the rear and the top five with thirty four point
Speaker 1: one nine. If you want to round out the sorry
Speaker 1: that seems to make sense. I mean, aren't all those
Speaker 1: places pretty densely populated, Yeah, so that would like it's
Speaker 1: not like they're having to factor in all the farmers
Speaker 1: out in the middle of nowhere who are well and
Speaker 1: they're also smaller than places like the United States, where
Speaker 1: we have some very dense urban areas, but we also
Speaker 1: have some very wide spaces between US and some other
Speaker 1: populations in the United States. So the other the other
Speaker 1: top ten included Luxembourg, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, and Sweden. Sweden
Speaker 1: had twenty nine point thirty six megabits per second. United
Speaker 1: States ranked in at thirty one. And uh, then if
Speaker 1: you look at the United States just trying to figure
Speaker 1: out which states have the fastest, well, first of all,
Speaker 1: the state we live in, Georgia ranks twenty second out
Speaker 1: of the fifty states with eighteen point five one megat's
Speaker 1: per second, so we're still over the average. The national
Speaker 1: average Orange. Yes, yes, yes, we are signed to be
Speaker 1: proud of. So can you can you take a guess
Speaker 1: at which state, according to net index, has the the
Speaker 1: fastest bit rate speed. UH. For if we're going to
Speaker 1: go for for small and compact, I would say what
Speaker 1: Rhode Island? Rhode Island, Uh, Tennessee, Tennessee. It was Delaware.
Speaker 1: You were on the right track there, of ok Obama.
Speaker 1: But yeah, Delaware with twenty five point to nine. So
Speaker 1: that that again is coined to net index. So your
Speaker 1: mileage may vary depending upon which which oracle you consult
Speaker 1: when you try to figure out who has the fastest
Speaker 1: data transmission speeds. Oh no, I said Tennessee, because I
Speaker 1: have no idea to what extent this is true. But
Speaker 1: when I go home to my hometown of Chattanooga, the
Speaker 1: local Electric Power Board has been advertising their UH fiber
Speaker 1: optic service and and there's some kind of claim. Don't
Speaker 1: want to misrepresent them, I don't remember exactly, but there's
Speaker 1: some kind of superlative claim they make. You know, this
Speaker 1: is the fastest fiber optic internet access ever UH with asterisk.
Speaker 1: I don't remember exactly what I mean. That may may
Speaker 1: not be fair, but it's something that they claim it's
Speaker 1: really really fast and my parents house really fast internet.
Speaker 1: I will say, yeah, well, and I mean I've lived
Speaker 1: in places where the connections weren't so great and and
Speaker 1: it was a real pain. And then I've the place
Speaker 1: where I live now the connection tends to be really
Speaker 1: really good. Um. So I mean it all depends on
Speaker 1: where you live, what sort of connections are to your house.
Speaker 1: And again, like we're talking the difference between speed and
Speaker 1: through put. When you're talking about speed, depending on depending
Speaker 1: again upon whom you ask, most will say, oh, it's
Speaker 1: essentially the speed of light. Yeah, yeah, that that That's
Speaker 1: one thing I wanted to bring up. So we as
Speaker 1: we established at the beginning, we keep saying speed, but
Speaker 1: we are talking about throughput. Yeah, what is what role
Speaker 1: is the actual physical speed play? I mean, how fast
Speaker 1: are these signals going? And does that part even matter?
Speaker 1: It they're going really really fast, like so fast that
Speaker 1: on Earth it almost doesn't matter what the actual speed
Speaker 1: is because it's it's so fast as to to us
Speaker 1: to seem close to instantaneous. I've read some different figures
Speaker 1: and I don't know which one is correct, but I
Speaker 1: mean some of basically said, I've seen like that, uh,
Speaker 1: signals in fiber optic cable tend to travel at like
Speaker 1: sixty percent of the speed of light, And then I've
Speaker 1: seen others that say it's it's like nineties something percent,
Speaker 1: which is a huge difference. Yeah, exactly, even at it's
Speaker 1: still really fast, but no, thirty difference in claims is
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. Yeah, So I have no idea who to
Speaker 1: trust there, and I don't know how fast that blip
Speaker 1: really goes. Yeah, And again, I think part of that
Speaker 1: is that there's so many places where that blip could
Speaker 1: encounter congestion that it makes it problematic to measure that speed.
Speaker 1: Because if you're talking about just through a fiber optic cable,
Speaker 1: then you know, you would imagine that it would move
Speaker 1: at the speed that light would travel through that medium. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind that, of course, light does not travel
Speaker 1: through every medium at the same speed. When we say
Speaker 1: the speed of light, generally, what we're talking about is
Speaker 1: the speed of light through the vacuum of space. But
Speaker 1: but light just is not the vacuum of space exactly right, right,
Speaker 1: So light does travel through different media at different speeds. Right. So,
Speaker 1: but here's an interesting question. Why is fiber optic cable
Speaker 1: so much faster than a traditional cable, because, if I'm
Speaker 1: not wrong, both signals would technically be traveling at something
Speaker 1: like the speed of light. Right that one is sending
Speaker 1: blips of light through a through a tiny glass wire
Speaker 1: and it's being reflected down along the axis of that wire,
Speaker 1: And then the other is sending an electromagnetic pulse along
Speaker 1: electrons through again and and but wouldn't both of those
Speaker 1: essentially be traveling at the speed of light or is
Speaker 1: there a different speed of light in those two media? Well,
Speaker 1: there's I'm guessing that there is a difference in the
Speaker 1: speed of light in those two media. But I think
Speaker 1: the bigger the bigger issue here is again through put
Speaker 1: It's not it's not again, it's not the speed of
Speaker 1: the information traveling along the distance of the cable. It's
Speaker 1: how much of information can that cable accommodate at one time.
Speaker 1: So I've also read that I think the fiber optic
Speaker 1: cable has less interference. That's true. That, uh, it's less
Speaker 1: susceptible to I don't know what, maybe a magnetic field
Speaker 1: or something like that messing up the signal and causing
Speaker 1: you'd have to send it again. Have you ever have
Speaker 1: you ever listened to music over speaker and had a
Speaker 1: phone go off near it and then get that stuttering
Speaker 1: noise to day to day to day? Did it? Did it?
Speaker 1: You know? It sounds like a great premise for a
Speaker 1: sci fi movie, right, You know why are the phones
Speaker 1: doing that? Yeah? Well, yeah, it's it's because of that
Speaker 1: electromagnetic it's the electromagnetic field, and it's because your speakers
Speaker 1: have really lousy shielding around the cables. Because the electromagnetic
Speaker 1: field is interfering with the transmission of signals across those cables,
Speaker 1: and that's why you're picking up this erratic noise that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be there. So if you shield the cables more
Speaker 1: thoroughly than that protects against that same sort of thing.
Speaker 1: You also can get electron leakage through these cables, and
Speaker 1: that can cause errors in in uh transmissions. So if
Speaker 1: I were to send a message over a copper cable
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of leakage along the line,
Speaker 1: you could get errors on the other end of it.
Speaker 1: You know, the file would not would not end up
Speaker 1: loading correctly unless you had really good error protection on there.
Speaker 1: Whereas detection and protection and where they could account for
Speaker 1: the slow it down in anything when you have to
Speaker 1: send the packet again. Yeah, and then, and the Internet's
Speaker 1: designed to allow for that. I mean, that's one of
Speaker 1: the big advantages of the way the Internet works is that, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, the files are broken up into packets. Those
Speaker 1: packets go across the network. They don't all necessarily follow
Speaker 1: the exact same pathway, and there are duplicates that get across,
Speaker 1: so that when the receiving computer starts getting these packets together,
Speaker 1: it just starts putting it together like it's a puzzle.
Speaker 1: But it's a puzzle where you already know where every
Speaker 1: single piece is supposed to go. And once you have
Speaker 1: packet number twelve, you don't need any of the other
Speaker 1: packet number twelves and you just grab the packets that
Speaker 1: you need and put it back together. That's an oversimplification
Speaker 1: of what's going on with packet switching, but that's the
Speaker 1: general idea, and it's to make the Internet more robust
Speaker 1: and to allow for the fact that sometimes you run
Speaker 1: into these problems with congestion, and that's one way to
Speaker 1: get around it. Literally you're going around the congestion to
Speaker 1: go take a different pathway to get your destination. You
Speaker 1: can also compress the files uh down in various ways
Speaker 1: act sure, I mean even you know, not even just
Speaker 1: just like a ZIP file. But it's a process that
Speaker 1: many computers will go through while they are sending information, right,
Speaker 1: And that helps too, because you're actually reducing the amount
Speaker 1: of information that needs to be sent across the network. Thus,
Speaker 1: again you're not making the file move faster, You're just
Speaker 1: making less information so that you don't have to together
Speaker 1: on the other side. Yeah, what about what about microwaves?
Speaker 1: I've heard I've heard that especially on some really really
Speaker 1: high energy trading companies are starting to look at microwaves
Speaker 1: as a method of communication. Well, thirty Rock has taught
Speaker 1: me anything. Microwaves are really important. There's a whole division
Speaker 1: at G where it was am I thinking of the
Speaker 1: right thing I have? Yeah? Microwaves division. Yeah, yeah, No,
Speaker 1: these these these trading firms that are dealing with with
Speaker 1: with trades that are going on, you know, by by computers, Jo,
Speaker 1: you were talking about a little bit earlier. Yeah, they've
Speaker 1: got these these robots that do trades for him right there.
Speaker 1: They're big computer brains and and they're way smarter than
Speaker 1: us or at least, they're way better at way faster
Speaker 1: than us at process. Yeah, they're way better at playing
Speaker 1: this weird game where they make money by just making trade.
Speaker 1: It's faster than anybody else can UM. And so they
Speaker 1: might buy and sell a stock like eight times within
Speaker 1: half a second UM. And the the money they're making
Speaker 1: is directly dependent on how fast they can transmit the signal. Right,
Speaker 1: Like they're responding to market pressures and they have to
Speaker 1: know when there's like a trend in the market. I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're checking the differences between different markets and I
Speaker 1: think playing off of that. So for them, time really
Speaker 1: is money. Yeah, well well literally, UM. One company, trade
Speaker 1: Works is putting together this microwave network and they say
Speaker 1: that it's going to um shave maybe two point three
Speaker 1: milliseconds off of off of the transfer process. And at
Speaker 1: this two point three milliseconds could save up point oh
Speaker 1: eight cents per share traded, which could be worth like
Speaker 1: like over a thousand bucks a day. To anyone who's
Speaker 1: doing this, this is all crazy to me, like like
Speaker 1: to the to the to the point that the people
Speaker 1: are NASDAC and CEM are putting together a network that
Speaker 1: they're going to be charging like twenty dollars a month
Speaker 1: for people to use your money. Witchcraft frightens me. And well,
Speaker 1: I mean this is a tangent, but it's just it's
Speaker 1: it's fascinating to me that that all of this, all
Speaker 1: of this is just because you know, microwaves, You've got
Speaker 1: these dish networks that are sending signals through the air.
Speaker 1: They don't have to go through cables, they don't have
Speaker 1: to go around curves or bends. You don't have any
Speaker 1: kind of degradation or or or you do have degradation,
Speaker 1: but it's a different kind. But it's like a direct
Speaker 1: line of sight kind of transmission as opposed to whatever
Speaker 1: pathway would have to take in order. It's amazing to
Speaker 1: me that that little could make that difference, that big
Speaker 1: of a difference. Well, it's just cumulative, right, And what
Speaker 1: I was about to say a second ago, it's just
Speaker 1: it's crazy. This is how people are making money. I mean,
Speaker 1: and I think originally a stock market, I think like
Speaker 1: you're investing in a business that you expect to succeed,
Speaker 1: But at this point you're just you're investing in a
Speaker 1: business that you predict will increase in the you know,
Speaker 1: the price of the stock at some amount within the
Speaker 1: next second, right right, Yeah. Micromanaging to that extent does
Speaker 1: fill me with a sense of dread. Hey, you know
Speaker 1: we're so good at it now the roots? Yeah yeah, no,
Speaker 1: no to me. To me, it feels like you're you're
Speaker 1: putting together like like a cheat codes that you can
Speaker 1: press a single button and go how do you can
Speaker 1: rather than just press see here. To me, what this
Speaker 1: tells me is that in the future, not only other
Speaker 1: robots going to get smarter and more capable at destroying us,
Speaker 1: but they will also have all the money. Weren't we
Speaker 1: talking about the speed of communication? Yeah, we were. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's why the robots are the ones who are
Speaker 1: really good. Well, how crazy will this get? I mean,
Speaker 1: so again, if we're not talking about speed, which we
Speaker 1: pretty much know the upper limit there, but what's the
Speaker 1: upper limit on throughput? That's a good question. And I well,
Speaker 1: I was reading about in the research I was doing
Speaker 1: for the episode that uh, some researchers I think it
Speaker 1: was a Dutch Japanese partnership. Um, there were some scientists
Speaker 1: who put together a twelve core optical fiber that could
Speaker 1: deliver one pet a bit per second. That I understand
Speaker 1: that number. That's great. Peat a bit, well, it's a
Speaker 1: it's what is it goes kill a bit, mega bit, big,
Speaker 1: a bit, ter a bit, pet a bit then up
Speaker 1: to xo bit. Yeah, and so this thing could deliver
Speaker 1: it could carry a pet a bit of information across
Speaker 1: I think it was something like fifty kilometers uh in
Speaker 1: one second. Yeah, that's a lot. That's just that, like
Speaker 1: you could transmit the entire Internet back and forth between
Speaker 1: some buildings and I don't know, like five minutes. Essentially
Speaker 1: you could do the Library of Congress in a couple
Speaker 1: of seconds. Yeah, like the entire everything in the Library
Speaker 1: of Congress in a couple of seconds. Yeah, that's that's impressive.
Speaker 1: I mean and again again yeah, we kind of think
Speaker 1: like what would you even use that for? And in
Speaker 1: the future we might we might have answers for that,
Speaker 1: like holograms, right, well, no, exactly. The point I wanted
Speaker 1: to make is we'll find a way. I mean, if
Speaker 1: there's a free launch, somebody's gonna eat it. Yeah, it'll
Speaker 1: be it'll be the first person Shooters of the future
Speaker 1: will be reliant on that. Anyone who does not have
Speaker 1: that pet a bit per second, So sad my Halo
Speaker 1: game is only going to get worse. It's great, like
Speaker 1: by the time, hey, I'm still entering my character's name
Speaker 1: on the screen and you've already kill me fifteen times. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a good discussion. And you know what, I think
Speaker 1: that there's another part of this discussion we need to have,
Speaker 1: which is on Earth speed. We we've kind of cracked
Speaker 1: that nut. I mean, we've got we've got it fast
Speaker 1: enough where the delays in communication are fairly small. I
Speaker 1: mean even if you're for most purposes, they're not speed
Speaker 1: based really like we've been saying they're they're bandwidth based, right, So,
Speaker 1: but there is there is something to say about speed obstacles,
Speaker 1: and that's when we start talking about getting off this
Speaker 1: planet and going somewhere else and then communicating back home.
Speaker 1: So in our next episode, I think we're going to
Speaker 1: focus on that. Uh. In the meantime, guys out there
Speaker 1: who are listening, I would highly recommend you get in
Speaker 1: touch with us, let us know what you think. Let's
Speaker 1: know if you have any topics you think we should
Speaker 1: tackle in future episodes of Forward Thinking, you can get
Speaker 1: in touch with us with our email address. That's f
Speaker 1: w Thinking at Discovery dot com, or you can go
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Speaker 1: social media stuff we've got there. Come and join the conversation,
Speaker 1: be part of it. We really look forward to speaking
Speaker 1: with you guys, and we will talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. For more on this topic and the future
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