Wil McCarthy by Bloom

Author:Bloom [Bloom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-06-08T20:01:57+00:00

Fifteen

Descent

Viewers: I have to ask you to please stop sending us video mail. I received a physics lesson this morning, after complaining about sluggish communications, and I’d like to pass it along to you so you’ll see our situation more clearly. The growing light-lag between ourselves and the Immunity is a problem in and of itself, severely limiting our telepresence capabilities. It’s hard to be in two places at once when there’s an hour’s round-trip signal time between them! Wallich seems the most affected by this, the most inconvenienced. Also the most upset, especially since the Immunity seems to be grinding on without him. One does like to feel indispensable.

But the larger problem at this point is something called data rate. Louis Pasteur’s antennas, and to a lesser extent the Immunity’s own transmitters, have limited broadcast power, and the receivable portion of that power drops off very quickly with distance. But it still takes a certain amount of energy to register a data bit at the receiving end, the upshot of which is that the farther away we get, the fewer bits we can flash in and out per second. Viewer response is greatly appreciated your letters are a much more important part of our day than these reports probably are in yours—but since our stop at Saint Helier the volume of mail has gone orbital, even as our data rates are shrinking. The resulting data jams can interfere with higher priority traffic, which of course is potentially hazardous.

From this point forward, friend, those letters need to be sent voice-only, or better yet, as plaintext. Video mail will be screened and discarded at the transmitting end, so if you do send it, it’s going straight to data heaven. But plaintext is a lost art that could use a little revival anyway. Try it out. We look forward to hearing from you in this exciting and much less costly format.

From “Data Rate and the Fear of Lost Mail,”

(PD) 2106 by John Strasheim

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