Railroad Time; Moving Information versus Things

Prompt: Gleick writes early in the chapter that in 1849, "already railroad time was telegraphic time" (125). Why was this so? How did the invention of railroads lead to time zones? What are the implications of differences in the velocity and magnitude of transporting information and transporting things? Are those differences today getting larger or smaller, and what do you see as the effects of that trend? Find at least one Web link that supports your opinion and quote it and link to it in your blog post.

Railroads & Timezones:

I can't remember for sure which book I read this in. I seem to recall that it was an antique book of mine titled “Railroads”, but I do not have the book with me, and finding any reference to it online is near impossible with such a vague, general title. Anyhow, the description of the invention of time zones ran something like this;

You are traveling across the U.S. By train, starting a new life in the open West. While the trip lasts a mere ten days now, rather than a grueling 6 months, you are still exhausted from your travel. You lean back and take a nap on your wooden bench as you roll down the line.

Some time later, you awake, and ask what time it is. The German immigrant across from you looks at his watch. “9 o'clock” by my watch he says”. The New Yorker in the seat behind responds “2 PM”.

You look out the window, and notice that it appears to be high noon. Confused, yes?

The railroad allowed such ease and speed of movement across land that it became necessary for time zones to be put in place. Noon in Arizona happens after Noon in New York and before Noon in Oregon. This, of course, would wreak havoc with train schedules, which depended on strict adherence to a “timetable”, a set of company-issued times that certain trains were supposed to occupy certain tracks. Confusion of times would result in, at the very least, delays, and at the worst, a “cornfield meet” (a.ka. Head-on collision). In America, this led to the introduction of five different time zones.

While Gleick barely touched in the subject, other countries, such as England, opted for a standard system-wide time for the entire rail system, with that electric telegraph clock being used to standardize clocks across the system, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_time, making “railroad time telegraphic time” in England. In the U.S., however, telegraph operators in one time zone would have to recall the difference in time when sending messages to another time zone, thus making telegraphic time dependent on railroad time.

Moving: Information v. Things

One could argue that the point of moving information is to change and affect how things move. People post ads on Craigslist to get rid of possessions and get money. Election ads move people in or out of office. Take a look at any online shopping page such as Amazon.com. Photos, buyer reviews, item descriptions, cost savings, shipping addresses, and all the rest, all to encourage you to buy a product or two. From these observations, one could draw two conclusions. 1. Information is a whole lot cheaper and easier to move than plain objects. Look at how much code appears on one Amazon.com product page in order to sell one product. Information is cheap and necessary to move product. 

It would also seem obvious that moving objects is a concrete, set-in place system that people don't really care about as long as their order shows up within a week. People don't want to wait for information, however. We want that music now. We need to read that text message during class. We can't wait 30 seconds (anymore) for a webpage to open, and if I don't find it on Google in 2 minutes, it doesn't exist. We are always looking for new ways to get information. We used to wait for both information and physical objects because information was sold on physical objects. “I'll wait for it to come out on VHS”, “I only get the Sunday newspaper”, “I'll borrow that book from a friend next week”. We want more and more information and we want it faster and faster, but, usually, we are fine with choosing the cheap (read: slow) shipping option when we order something. Why is that? I do not know for sure.