Sunday, May 13, 2018

Facebook 1890: A Steampunk Interlude (part 1)

Narrator               The year: 1894. The city: San Francisco.
Thaddeus             I have upgraded our service, dearest daughter. We now have information transmission at the rate of 20 characters every second. At this speed, the alphabet can be transmitted in just over a second, and an entire book in a few hours. Huzzah! Now this should help you with your studies!
Isabella                 Of what use is such impractically voluminous bandwidth, father?
Thaddeus             Undoubtedly we shall not only use this capacity to its fullest, but there will come a time when we will actually expect more.
Isabella                 Oh silly father, you're such a dreamer.  I do worry, though.  Such celerity! It seems more than the human mind can comprehend. Is it safe for words to travel faster than they may be read upon a page?
Thaddeus             Safe? Well, the lowercase letters seldom encounter problems, but I have read report of uppercase letters snagging upon themselves to cause congestion and on occasion, a service outage.
Isabella                 Hmm... at times your paternal humor inclines itself more toward irritation than amusement.

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