I got to thinking about how fast we can send and receive information.

Today if you want to transmit information, you have a number of ways to do it at around the speed of light, which means almost instantly or at most a few seconds, to anyone equipped to receive it nearly anywhere on earth. But, it wasn’t always like that.

At the time of the American Revolution the fastest way detailed information could be delivered was governed by how fast a horse you had. No detailed info could be transmitted faster. I say detailed because the Romans army used fires and flags to relay simple messages and of course there was the lantern in the Old North Church---one if by land, two if by sea---to send an ‘instant message’ to Paul Revere. But detailed instructions had to be written down and dispatched by a runner or a person on horseback or by horse drawn coach.

A famous example is the legend of a message run from the town of Marathon to Athens bringing the results of the battle of Marathon. The runner, Pheidippides, is said to have run the 26 plus miles collapsing and dying after delivering the message, “We have won.”

Of course, the type of information tended to have a higher level of importance because it was so difficult and expensive to send. Today we are awash in a Tsunami of information. Most of us get more news in a day than our ancestors did in a lifetime.