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Posted by Patrick Quinn May 18, 2004 at 9:30 a.m.

Popology 10: Bandwidth

OK, so media.Some people say, "Media is a drug." So is penicillin.I believe media to be the most powerful agency of social change in human history. There was a time when it was possible to divide humans into those who mastered fire and those who didn't. Now we can divide humans into those who have mastered bandwidth and those who haven't.The clash of civilizations is between those who have mastered bandwidth and those who haven't. We who have mastered bandwidth will inevitably win. We will win by showering our enemies with bandwidth. It will not be Paul Bremer or the Iraqi National Council that brings Arab culture into the twentieth century. It will be television. It will be al-Jazeera.Popology treats all media as undifferentiated bandwidth. Bandwidth is the most consequential--the most significant--attribute of culture. Bandwidth is where culture happens. The rate of cultural change in any population is solely a function of the bandwidth available to that population. The differences between cultures are fundamentally a function of the bandwidth available to each. This is true of the differences between Tokyo and Omaha, and it is true of the differences between Omaha and ancient Greece.Bandwidth is the measure of media's carrying capacity. Culture is a reservoir. Media is the plumbing that connects the water to individual users. Bandwidth is the diameter of the pipes.Bandwidth is finite. There are only as many channels as there are. The world is on a monthly-minutes plan--at any given moment there is a limit to the amount of available bandwidth. The cultural wallpaper is only as big as the wall.Bandwidth always increases. There have been and will be local, particular instances of bandwidth reduction--a network crash is a bandwidth reduction, the fall of the Roman Empire was a bandwidth reduction--but net planetary bandwidth always increases.Demand for bandwidth always exceeds supply. There are never enough monthly minutes. There are never enough channels. There is always a line at the cultural phone booth.Bandwidth is where culture happens. Bandwidth is finite. Bandwidth always increases. Bandwidth is scarce. This is the lens through which popology views media, culture, history.It leads to the conclusion that television will save the world.