Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Thought on the Information Technology of Star Wars
Sure, the giant space ships are flashy, but what is really amazing in Star Wars is the communications technology. These people long ago and far far away talk to each other via life sized three dimensional images with no lag time FROM MOVING SPACESHIPS. I can barely have a conversation with voice over IP protocols with a person on the other side of the same planet as I'm on. Here on earth, our typical communication protocols become basically unusable at latencies of 1000ms. For reference, it takes about 200ms on a good connection for a data packet to make it from one side of the continental U.S. to the other. A problem with satellite connections is the non-negotiably higher latencies necessitated. We know from instances in the extended universe in which ion blasts disable communication sets in snubfighters that the people of Star Wars, like us, are communicating by sending electric signals. It takes time for an electron to travel. So how in the name of the Sith are images being transmitted in real time from one side of a galaxy to the other? It boggles the mind.
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