Size still matters: November 11, 1996 issue of New Thinking

November 11, 1996 New Thinking:
Size still matters

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November 11, 1996

Size still matters

By Gerry McGovern

In physical space, atoms create our geography and distance measures it. In cyberspace, digital ‘atoms’ (bytes) create our geography and their size measures it.

Physical space and cyberspace are in ways fundamentally different. We consume, refine, distil, mix or burn ‘limited’ physical resources.

In cyberspace, there is essentially no limit to the amount of digital bytes we can create. I could for example, have duplicated these 500 or so words you are now reading 500 times and sent them to you.

I would have sent you one unit of hopefully valuable information and 499 units of repetitive waste. You would have not thought kindly of me for wasting bandwidth, for wasting your time and money in downloading my waste.

Such things as information, knowledge and wisdom are essentially ‘limited’ resources. Just because everyone can now publish endlessly, doesn’t suddenly mean that everyone has endless valuable things to publish.

Cyberspace is very much an environment in formation. Digital minerals are indeed forming, but so too are masses of low and high-level toxic digital waste. While there is indeed infinite space, we humans have finite time to investigate that space, which to all intents and purposes means that the cyberspace we will inhabit will be limited by our time and energy. We may roam for a while but sooner or later we will reside mainly within chosen digital localities.

The file size of the digital units will measure our new geography, with most or all of the same parameters with which distance has measured physical space. For example, what is local in cyberspace is not what is physically near you, but rather what you can reach and what can reach you in the shortest time.

Thus, a short, text-based email is local, while a large film clip is long-distance, in the sense that the email gets to you quickly, while the animation is slow to download.

In physical space, the distribution cost of a product is measured by such things as the distance it has to travel to its consumer, the timeframe it is required within, its size, weight, etc.

In cyberspace, we are in the honeymoon period of its formation. As it solidifies into a global gathering and marketplace, where masses of people will work, live, play and communicate, that honeymoon will end.

Today, nobody expects to send a letter from Dublin to Cork for the same price that they send a reel of film from Dublin to Los Angeles. When the cyberspace honeymoon ends (in the next few years), nobody can expect to send a digital ‘reel’ of film from Dublin to Cork for the same price they send an email from Dublin to Los Angeles.

As my favorite bluesman, John Lee Hooker, once sang: “The best things in life are free, but you can give that to the birds and bees.”

The days of being charged the same flat price, no matter what you send or download over the Internet, are numbered. As distance helped define cost with regard to what we distribute in physical space, so will digital file size help define cost with regard to what we distribute in cyberspace.

Gerry McGovern

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The days of being charged the same flat price, no matter what you send or download over the Internet, are numbered.