Transportation and media

Returning to my favorite subject, the relationship between transportation and media. For example, what does it mean that telegraph lines followed the rail lines?

There must be some general principles, but let's look at the specific case of 1922 vs 1928 regarding the roads and the media. In 1924, media was the voice telephone switch. Telephone lines ran down the road. Person to person calls were easy but the lines congested, party line line sharing was the technology. There was no set of telephone calls one could make in fast enogh time to get many cars on the road.

in 1928 that changed, almost overnight. Broadcast radio could put a quarter million cars on the road in about 15 minutes. So the new arrangement required the radio broadcaster be in the center of radial freeways. The freeway makes possible the sudden movement of large blocks of cars. Having excess freeway capacity is disorder, using that disorder to broadcast thousands of cars for a shopping sale is order.

That is the interaction that causes depressions. Why is this such a common theme, info tech revolutions causing depressions. Accurate information about remote inventory reduces round aboutness in distribution. We use the media to match aggregates of shoppers and inventory, obviously.

So what is the web doing to us? If the web is imposing order onto transportation, then there will be a very sudden restructuring in the economy. The order the web imposes is the UPS delivery truck. Here is how the trade off works. Any good worth more than say $30, can be scheduled for delivery in an accurate future, at lower cost. So, other than monthly disposable, more consumer goods are susceptible to the new transaction technology. The web entwines production, marketing, pre-ordering and delivery into a single sub-net within the web. Even the UPS guy is on the web tracking his net loads and reporting back.

So, even without automation, the transportation grid has to be under web control. Pre-purchase of traffic space and path control on the traffic lights, the traffic system has to join the web.