Chapter 2 2. New Space for Humanity/Infinite Bandwidth from a trickle to a mighty river

In the late 1960s, when I was an assistant professor of computer graphics, no one knew what computer graphics was, and computers were completely outside of everyday life. Today, I often hear 65-year-old business tycoons brag about how many bytes of memory (memory) they have in their great computer equipment, or the capacity of their hard disk (harddisk).Others half-knowledge about how fast their computer is - thanks to a great ad for "Intel processor inside" (1interlnside), or gleefully talk about the operating system's features.I recently met a socialite, a rich and attractive lady who, thanks to her proficiency in Microsoft's (Microsoft) operating system, even started a small consulting business for her fellow computer-savvy peers .Her business card read: "I provide 'windows' (windows) services."

Bandwidth is different.Most people don't know much about bandwidth, especially today, when fiber optics have taken us from narrow bandwidth to almost unlimited bandwidth.Bandwidth refers to the capacity of a particular channel to carry information, and most people think of it like the diameter of a pipe or the lanes of a highway. These metaphors ignore some subtle and important differences between different transmission media (copper wire, fiber optics, air) - we have the ability to decide on the same copper wire according to the way we design (and modulate) the signal.How many bits are transmitted per second on fiber optics or in the atmosphere.Still, we can outline the characteristics of copper telephone wire (copperte1ephonewire), fiber optics (flber) and radio spectrum (radiospe-ctrum) to give you a better idea of ​​how weightless bits actually move.The tortoise and the hare race copper telephone wires are often called "twisted pairs" (twistedpair), because in the early days they were tangled together like braids, just like the light wires that can still be seen in some old and luxurious European restaurants today.Its usual rate is 9600 bits/second (bps), or 9600 baud (baud). (Bps and baud do not technically mean exactly the same thing, but they are now used interchangeably, and I use them in this book. The name baud is in honor of Emièle Baudot, a pioneer of telecommunications technology, just like the "Mo" in the telegraph. The Morse Code is named after its inventor, Morse.) The newer modems can operate at 38,400 baud (which is still more than 100 times slower than the potential transmission rate of the copper wires that connect most American homes).We can think of the twisted pair as the tortoise in the "tortoise and the hare" story. Although it runs very slowly, it is not as slow as you originally thought.

You can think of the capacity of optical fiber as infinite.We don't know exactly how many bits per second fiber can transmit. Recent research has shown that with fiber optics we can transmit almost: a trillion bits per second.In other words, an optical fiber as thin as a hair can transmit all the contents of every issue of the Wall Street Journal since its inception in less than one second.At this speed to transmit data, optical fiber can transmit TV programs of 1 million channels at the same time-about 200,000 times faster than twisted pair, which is a big leap forward!And, don't forget, I'm only talking about an optical fiber.

So if you still don't have enough, you can make more fibers.After all, fiber optics are just glass. Most people think that the transmission capacity of ether (ether, that is, the atmosphere, which is commonly called "radio waves") is also unlimited.After all, it is air, and air Emile Bodo (1845-1903), a French inventor, invented the teletype code "Baudotcode".Samuel Morse (SamueIMorse, 1791-1872) American inventor, invented Morse code (Morsecode).is everywhere.Although I use the word ether throughout, it really only has a historical meaning.Once radio waves (radiowaves) were discovered, ether was regarded as a mysterious medium for propagating these waves. However, scientists could not find it, but instead discovered the existence of photons (ph-otons).Stationary satellites (stationary satellites) orbit 22,300 miles above the equator, which means that there are 34 trillion cubic miles of ether between the earth and the geosynchronous orbit. not collide with each other.This makes sense when you consider that millions of remote control units around the world operate by wireless communication with televisions and other similar devices.Because these remotes aren't very powerful, the few bits transmitted from your hand to your TV won't change the TV channel in a neighboring apartment or town.

However, as you have heard, if you switch to a cordless telephone (cordlesstelephone), the shape is very different.The Great Earth-Space Shift Once we harness the ether as a powerful telecommunications and broadcasting transmission medium, we must be extremely careful not to allow signals to interfere with each other.We have to be willing to pre-locate ourselves somewhere in the spectrum and not use the ether insatiably.It must be used as efficiently as possible, because unlike fiber optics, we cannot keep making more ether. Nature has long since finished the work once and for all. There are many ways to use ether efficiently.For example, by establishing grids and dividing transmission units, users can use the same frequency in different signal areas (quadrants), so that various parts of the spectrum can be reused; it is also possible to enter parts that were previously considered restricted areas (Because those frequencies would ruin those naive guys).

But even if you got all the tricks and maxed out the bandwidth, the bandwidth that Ethernet can provide is extremely limited compared to the bandwidth that optical fiber can provide and our ability to continuously manufacture and lay optical fiber.So my suggestion is that today's wired and wireless communications should swap places. When Nebraska Senator Bob Kerry (h6kerrey) was running for president, he once spent hours touring our media lab.When we met, he started off by saying "The Negroponte Switch."This concept, which I first explored and introduced at a Northern Telecom conference where I was a speaker with George Gilder, simply means that the current underground (i.e., cables) will transmit information via Ethernet in the future, and vice versa.In other words: information transmitted in the air goes underground, and information transmitted underground goes up into the sky.

I call this "swapping places," and Gilder calls it a "Negropontian switch."The noun is not dirty and gone. I think the benefits of this location shift are self-evident, because the bandwidth of underground pipelines is unlimited, while the bandwidth of large pipelines is limited.There is only one ether, but the number of optical fibers is infinite.While we may be getting smarter about using ether, we'll eventually have to save up all the spectrum for wireless communications, for things like airplanes.on moving objects such as ships, cars, suitcases, or watches.Their range of activities cannot be limited.Optical fiber: the way of nature 6 years ago, when the Berlin Wall fell, the German Federal Post and Telecommunications Department lamented that it was 5 to 7 years earlier, because the price of optical fiber was too expensive at that time, and it was too early to fully lay out the optical fiber telephone system in East Germany.

Today, fiber optics are cheaper than copper wires, even with the cost of electronics at both ends.If that's not the case for you, just wait patiently for a few more months and everything will change, as prices for fiber-optic connection equipment, switches and converters are plummeting.Unless the communication lines are only a few feet or yards long, or the installers are not very skilled up). The only real advantage of copper wire is the ability to carry electricity.It's a sensitive topic for phone companies.The telephone company has always prided itself on the fact that when a hurricane hits, it may cause a power outage, but the phone system can still function as usual.If your phone line is fiber optic instead of copper, you must get power from your local power company, so if there is a power outage, your phone is guaranteed to be affected as well.Even if there is a spare battery, it is not a wise move because it takes special care to maintain it.For this reason, there will be copper-clad optical fibers or copper wires clad with optical fibers.

However, from the perspective of Bit, it will be optical fiber that connects the entire earth as a whole. We can also observe the transition from copper wire to optical fiber from another angle.About 5% of the equipment of US telephone companies is updated every year. For maintenance and other reasons, they replace copper wires with fiber optics.Although this upgrade work is not evenly distributed across the country, it is interesting to note that if it continues at this rate, in another 20 years or so, the entire country will be covered with fiber optics.The point is, whether or not we need this bandwidth and know how to use it, we will soon develop a national broadband information structure.At the very least, fiber optic systems will provide us with higher quality and more reliable communication services.

It took us more than a decade to right the wrong that Judge Harold Greene made in 1983.At that time, he banned the regional Bell Company (RegionaIBeIIOperaiingCompanies) from entering the information and entertainment industry.It was not until October 20, 1994 that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC, Federa I Communications Commission) took an important step and approved the so-called "video dialing" (videodialtone). Ironically, Bell's lobbyists made a specious but highly effective case to justify entering the information and entertainment business.They succeeded. The phone companies say their old phone service is outdated, and that unless they are approved to be providers of information more broadly, they have no incentive to incur the huge costs of building new infrastructure, namely fiber optics.

Wait a minute.The telephone companies have always played the role of information provider; in fact, the main source of income for most Bell companies is the telephone Yellow Pages (Yel1owPages).But what is inexplicable is that if the phone company atomically sends this information to "video dialing" it means that obtaining images is as easy as dialing a phone, allowing sending and receiving images to be part of the phone company's transmission service.A part of the telephone directory, which contains the names and numbers of telephone users such as companies and manufacturers, arranged by industry, and with classified advertisements.On your doorstep, there is no problem; but if they convert the information into bits and send it to you electronically, it will break the law.Evidently this was Judge Green's view. So, the lobbyists argue, the phone companies can only be justified in paying for regional fiber-optic cable lines if they get into the electronic messaging business.Their argument is that without new revenue streams, there is not enough incentive to make large-scale investments.This argument holds, the telephone companies are moving aggressively into the information and entertainment business, and are laying fiber optic cables a little faster than in the past. I think the result is pretty good.It will benefit consumers, but the above argument does not hold water. The phone companies, which overturned plausible laws with plausible arguments, may now be superstitious about their own. We do not need such a large bandwidth to provide information and entertainment services.In fact, the bandwidth of 1.2-6 million bits per second is more suitable for the needs of most media at present.We haven't even begun to understand or realize the creative potential of this bandwidth.Lawyers and phone company executives spent 10 years putting pressure on Judge Green, yet in the meantime they forgot to take a first look at the mammoth infrastructure that existed: twisted-pair wiring. Few people realize how good copper wire is.A technology called "Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Loop" can transmit large amounts of data using relatively short copper wires. ADSL-1 can input information of 1.544 million bits per second for 75% of American families and 80% of Canadian families, while outputting information of 64,000 bits per second. The operating speed of ADSL-2 exceeds 3 million bits/second, and ADSL-3 exceeds 6 million bits/second.And ADSL-1 is good enough for VHS-quality video. While this isn't a great way to get multimedia information into the home in the long run, it's puzzling how most people forget about it at this stage.One argument is that the cost per subscriber is too high, but that the high cost is due to the small amount of usage.And, even if the cost is temporarily high, even if it costs $1,000 per subscriber, it will be added gradually, and most of the cost will be divided among the subscribers as the number of subscribers increases.What's more, many Americans are willing to pay some or all of that $1,000 over a 3-4 year period to spread the start-up costs if the service piques their interest.Therefore, although fiber optics is the general trend, we can still make a difference and benefit from using existing copper wires. Many people overlook the stepping stone of copper wire.They thought they had to switch to fiber optics comprehensively and quickly to take advantage of its unlimited bandwidth in order to maintain a strong competitive advantage.What they fail to realize, however, is that nature and commercial interests will promote the natural development of fiber more than regulatory incentives.Just like a dog in love has an exceptionally sensitive sense of smell, a scholar who advocates broadband can sniff out every political opportunity to build a broadband network, as if this is a national imperative or a human right that must be fought for.In fact, unlimited bandwidth can be paradoxical and have some negative consequences: people are overwhelmed with too many bits, and peripheral machines become unnecessarily clumsy.Having unlimited bandwidth isn’t bad or wrong, but like sexual openness, it’s not necessarily a good thing either.Do we really want or need so many bits?Less is more The phrase "less is more" comes from the architect Mies van der Rohe.I take a lot from this statement when thinking about the amount of information that needs to be transmitted and the way in which it is received.For beginners in any new medium, this statement hits the nail on the head.Beginners don't understand that "less is more". Take the home video camera as an example.When you first get your camera up and running, you're likely to be constantly switching angles, zooming in and out, and experimenting with new tricks you've just discovered.The result is a crappy videotape where you're ashamed to show off, and even your family shies away from it because they're sick of the endless camera changes.After a period of time, when you calm down, you will use the freedom that new technology brings you more maturely and self-controlled. Much of that freedom also has a detrimental effect on the typefaces we get from our laser printers. The allure of being able to change fonts and font sizes pollutes many university and corporate documents today. Many people unknowingly mix letters of different shapes and sizes, now in normal font, now in bold, now in italics, now in italics, now in italics. Then add shadows to them.Only when you have a deeper understanding of typography, you will understand that it is more appropriate to stick to a single typeface (typeface), and changing the font size can only be done occasionally. "Less" may actually mean "more". The same is true for bandwidth.Many argue that if we have broadband, we should use broadband.This claim lacks brains.Some natural laws of bandwidth suggest that it is no more reasonable or logical to transmit more bits to someone than to turn up the radio volume to get more information. For example, in 1995, 1.2 million bits per second was the threshold for so-called "VHS-quality video."If you want to get a better picture, although it is good to increase the transmission rate by 2 to 3 times, the capacity of more than 6 million bits per second is not of much use.We don't enjoy imaginative new services just because we have so much bandwidth. Just because fiber is in the home doesn't mean new information and entertainment services will follow.For this service to develop, imagination is the key.The relationship between reducing the 10-bit area to 1 bandwidth and digital computing is very delicate.Today, the trade-off between bandwidth and computing is evident in videotelephones and more expensive videoconferencing systems.If you do the digital calculations at both ends of the wire, you can reduce the number of bits sent back and forth.Invest some money in digital image processing at both ends of the line, and you'll take up less channel capacity and lower transmission costs.In general, digital imaging can be considered an example of data compression regardless of its information content.Whether the show is a football game, a hot news interview, or a James Bond chase, people use the same coding techniques.Even as a layman to computer science, you can probably guess that all of these programs can be compressed differently.Once the information content is taken into account, we can compress the data in a completely straightforward manner.Just look at the following example of interpersonal communication to understand.Suppose there are 6 people sitting around a table for dinner, and they are talking enthusiastically about an absent person—Mr. A.During the discussion, I winked at my wife, Elaine, who was sitting across from me.After dinner, you came to me and asked: "Nicolas, I saw you wink at Elaine, what do you want to tell her?" I explained to you that we happened to have dinner with Mr. A the night before.At that time, he said that, contrary to how, he actually did, even though everyone thought that, in the end his real decision was what, and so on.In other words, it takes me about 100,000 to 1 bit rate to explain to you that I can communicate with my wife with 1 bit (please allow me to assume for a while, blinking your eyes is exactly the same as teleporting in ether 1 bit).What this example tells us is that the transmitter (me) and the receiver (my wife) have a common knowledge base, so we can communicate in a simplified way.In this example, I sent certain bits to her through the ether, triggering more messages in her mind.When you ask me, what did I communicate with her, I have to send all 100,000 bits to you.I therefore lose 100,000 to 1 data compression.There is a story about a couple who memorized hundreds of jokes by heart, so they could tell each other just by mentioning the joke number.A few digits will wake up their memory of the whole story and make them laugh out loud.A more prosaic application of this method to computer data compression is to number commonly used longer words and pass on those few bits rather than the entire string.Such techniques will become more common as we trade shared knowledge for more bandwidth.Condensing information not only saves the cost of information delivery, but also saves our time.The same bit, different worth Using today's phone billing method, if I want to tell you about Mr. A instead of my wife, I may have to pay 100,000 times the phone bill.It's not profitable at all for a telco to send a few bits back and forth.Currently, the economics of calls are based on how many bits are transmitted per second or how long each bit takes to transmit, and it doesn't matter what the bits represent.And to understand the economics of bandwidth, the real question is, are some bits worth more than others?The answer is obviously yes.However, the more complex question is whether the value of a bit should not only vary by its nature (e.g., is it a movie bit, a dialogue bit, or a pacemaker bit?), but also by reference to who the user is, Vary with time or manner of use?including National Geographic Most, including the staff at NatzoriaIGeographic, agree that a 6-year-old who uses the magazine's image archives for homework should get those image bits for free or essentially free.Instead, if I use those bits to write a thesis or develop a business plan, I should pay a fee, or even make an additional contribution, to subsidize the six-year-old.Thus, not only do bits have different values, but this value also changes according to who and how they are used.All of a sudden, social welfare bits, minority bits, and disabled bits are popping up!Congress will have to be creative in crafting a just institutional framework.Setting different prices for bits did not start today.I opened an account with Dow Jones, which gave me access to the stock market.I can only get stock market quotes 15 minutes from my account.If I wanted to get the latest quotes at all times, like my 86-year-old stockbroker uncle, I would have to pay Dow Jones or my uncle a substantial fee.This is just like the price difference between ordinary mail and air mail. The worth of bitcoins coming by plane and train is naturally different.In the case of real-time communication, the required bandwidth depends on the medium of the conversation.If I'm talking to you, there's no point trying to get my voice to you faster than I can.Of course, it is also unacceptable to be much slower than the speaking speed, or to be transmitted to you with a small delay.Even a quarter-second lag when making calls over a satellite line is unsettling for most people.But if I'm recording a message and want to send it to you, and I'm paying by the minute, then of course I want as many bits per second as possible.People across the country who use modems to get and send information feel the same way.Just a few years ago we thought 2400 baud was pretty good, but today, 38400 bps modems are everywhere and reduce phone bills by 94%.Fortunately for the telephone companies, 50 percent of trans-Pacific and 30 percent of trans-Atlantic calls are facsimile data at 9600 bps, not 64000 bps.Although the modem of 64000 bits/second has already appeared on the market.In star and ring networks it is not only the bandwidth of the channels that matters, but also their configuration.Simply put, the telephone system was a "star" network in which telephone lines radiated from a fixed point, like the streets of Washington or Paris.There is a distance between your house and the nearest local telephone exchange, and if you wish, you can run down the telephone line from home to have a look. On the contrary, cable TV has been in a "ring" ("1oop") since its birth, like a string of lights on a Christmas tree, connecting households in series.The narrowband of twisted-pair telephones and the wideband of coaxial cables (coaxia1cab1e) naturally lead to different star and ring networks.In the first example, each household is connected to a dedicated narrowband telephone line (dedicaied1ow-bandwidthline).In the second example, many households share a single broadband service. The architecture of star and ring networks is also influenced by the nature of the information content.In a telephone network, every conversation is different, and the bits sent to one home are indistinguishable from any other; it is essentially a vast-point-tovast-poini operation system.TV is different. You and your neighbors are watching the same program content, so it is reasonable to use the communication method of Christmas tree light strings-one point to multipoint (poini-tomultipoint).Traditionally, cable TV operators have copied the familiar wireless TV transmission method, but transferred the TV signal transmission from the air to the ground. But conventional wisdom is very conventional after all.In the future, the transmission method of TV programs will undergo drastic changes. You will no longer be satisfied with watching the same TV programs as your neighbors, or you can only watch the programs you want to watch within a specific time. So the idea of ​​the cable company will be closer and closer to the phone company, with lots of switches and "bases". In fact, 25 years from now, not only will there no longer be any difference between the telephone company and the cable TV company, but the network architectures of the telephone and cable TV companies will also converge. As a result, most networks will be star networks, with only regional or wireless broadcast networks employing rings in order to reach all homes at the same time.GM Hughes E1ecironics likes to call its DirectTV system "the crooked pipeline," and will tell you that DirectTV is equivalent to the cable TV system that sends information to every home. TV system.Indeed, if you are in the United States and you are reading this page, unless you hold up a lead umbrella, the Hughes satellite will pour 1 billion bits on you in seconds, and you will not be able to hide hide everywhere.Water pipes and ski lifts Many people new to the digital world tend to think of bandwidth as a plumber's job.If you imagine bits as atoms, images of large and small pipes, faucets, and hydrants come to mind.One of the most common metaphors is that using fiber optics is like drinking from a hose.This metaphor is very constructive, but it is also very misleading.Water is either flowing or not, and you can control the flow of water from garden hoses by twisting and tightening the spout.But even when the flow of water in a pipe slows down to a trickle, the water atoms are still moving as a group. Bits are different.Perhaps a more apt metaphor would be a cable car carrying ski tourists.The cable car moves at a steady pace, with more or less passengers getting on and off along the way.Likewise, you make a packet of information (packei) out of a bunch of bits, and you put that packet of information into a pipe that transmits information at a rate of millions of bits per second.Now, if I drop a packet of 10 bits per second into a fast-flowing pipe, my effective bandwidth is 10 bits per second, not the speed of the pipe. It sounds like a waste, but it's actually a smart idea.Because other people are also throwing packets into the same pipeline - this pipeline forms the basis of the Internet and Asynchronous Transfer Mode systems (in the near future, all telephone networks will work in ATM mode) 8 You will no longer Like the current transmission of voice, the entire telephone line is occupied, but the information packets marked with names and addresses are sent into the pipeline one by one, and they know when and where to get off the cable car.You pay per packet, not per minute. This method of subdividing bandwidth can also be understood from another perspective: the best way to achieve a rate of 1 billion bits per second is to transmit 1,000 bits in one millionth of a second; Send 1 million bits, and so on.In the case of television, think of the process as receiving an entire hour of video in seconds, rather than controlling the flow of water with a tap. Instead of sending 1,000 TV programs to everyone, it is better to send a certain program to a certain person in the real-time moment of Chan.This will revolutionize the way we think about broadcast television media.The speed at which bits are transmitted and the speed at which humans consume them will become irrelevant.