Speed now & then

[Ethan Dicks]

On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 12:20 PM, Murray McCullough via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> I’m not trying to date myself but have things truly sped up? In 1970’s
> ...  300 baud modem; by early 80’s had ‘zoomed’ to 9600 baud.

What hasn't changed is people.  Back when we had 300 baud, we only had
so many hours a night for eyeballs-on-slow text, so one could only
expect so much content to be transmitted.  File transfers were
hands-off, but even the graphic machines of the time had low-res
screens so a mono-graphic didn't take so long to pull down, unlike
640x480x8bit stuff that was common by the mid-90s.

As telecom speeds (modem then ISDN then DSL, etc, etc) ramped up, what
one could do in 60 seconds or even a 3-second attention span grew.
It's true that webpages have gotten really fat and the amount of media
one pulls down from a single click is staggering, but nobody would
have sat and waited that long for pages to load at dial-up speeds.
More bandwidth enables more to get pulled in the same amount of time,
it doesn't mean that anyone will stand still and load the same
quantity as before but faster.

It's like fixed purchase points for PCs or digital cameras or
whatever.  Each year, the new models cost about the same as the old
models but with more features.  The price points are set and as
technology gets cheaper, they just pack more in the box and leave the
price alone.  Same with telecom - more content, faster lines, same
time in chair.

-ethan