Well, I don't disagree that the telegraph was a major earth-shrinking development. I just disagree with the analogy with the internet. The telegraph dramatical

Well, I don't disagree that the telegraph was a major earth-shrinking development. I just disagree with the analogy with the internet. The telegraph dramatically reduced the latency of communication (from the maximum travel speed of a courier to that of the speed of electrical impulses). It didn't improve channel capacity at all though. In fact, it had less capacity than paper in a courier's satchel. This restricted the communication to those who can pay. And even they preferred to write crude, abbreviated messages due to cost. The internet didn't improve latency over the telex or phone networks (in fact, you're almost certain to see more latency on the packet-switched internet than on the circuit-based PSTN). What it did do is dramatically increase channel capacity, driving the cost of communication down to the point where anyone can communicate across the planet for nominal cost -- and can even send information-rich messages in data-hungry formats like video. The telegraph was the invention of instantaneous global communication. The internet was the democratization of it.