The Tangled Net: Introduction: Setting the Net

<jats:p> WHATEVER ELSE HISTORY may have to say about the mid-twentieth century, it will record that it was a period of enormous growth in the ability of human beings to move large quantities of messages almost instantaneously. The Science Council of Canada reports that while our energy capacities have increased 1,000 times in the past centun and our weaponry capabilities 1,000.000 times. our communications capacities have increased 10.000.000 times. The great inventions and technolopcal advances of our age have been almost exclusively concerned with the movement of information -images and words over distance. And the rate of invention has increased geometrically since the first telegraph message was sent in 1844. The diagram on the following page conveys something of the way communications developments have been coming in rapid succession over the past decades. </jats:p>