4 ms·

Interesting how geography limited empires before the advent of instant communication. It would be fascinating to see a comparison of the impact on empires when

by xrd 4y ago

Interesting how geography limited empires before the advent of instant communication. It would be fascinating to see a comparison of the impact on empires when instant communication is possible. What kind of regime change is possible when you can instantly spread propaganda and no longer need Paul Revere riding around telling everyone the British are coming.

rcarr 4y ago
Communication obviously plays a big part but I think time to action is probably the better metric. You need to be able to act quicker than your opponent, and if you can't, you need to be able to absorb the damage they can inflict in the mean time whilst still having enough resources to inflict more damage than you sustained when you can eventually act.
krisoft 4y ago
> before the advent of instant communication. But! Instant communication is not possible. :) This sounds like a nitpicking but this might become important if we spread out in space: We still have the light speed limit on communication. Which of course means that our communication is practically instantaneous around all of earth. (at least when measured against human reaction times.) But if we would spread ourselves to let's say the Oort cloud you would see very serious lag in communication. Not just between Earth and the cloud, but between points on the Oort cloud. Could the whole cloud ever be controlled by a single empire? Or would it break into a Voronoi diagram of "1 light month" large cells around points of interest?
- swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
  Is there enough matter for a serious political faction to subsist off of? The total mass of the asteroid belt is calculated to be 3% that of the Moon [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt We only use a small fraction of matter on the Earth, so maybe a good sized comet can host habitation. But the solid planets and moons are where humanity could thrive. The gas giants have too a gravity well, we'd need some seriously advanced propulsion to make it off, but there's 317x more matter on Jupiter than Earth.

by xrd 4y ago

rcarr 4y ago

Communication obviously plays a big part but I think time to action is probably the better metric. You need to be able to act quicker than your opponent, and if you can't, you need to be able to absorb the damage they can inflict in the mean time whilst still having enough resources to inflict more damage than you sustained when you can eventually act.

krisoft 4y ago

> before the advent of instant communication. But! Instant communication is not possible. :) This sounds like a nitpicking but this might become important if we spread out in space: We still have the light speed limit on communication. Which of course means that our communication is practically instantaneous around all of earth. (at least when measured against human reaction times.) But if we would spread ourselves to let's say the Oort cloud you would see very serious lag in communication. Not just between Earth and the cloud, but between points on the Oort cloud. Could the whole cloud ever be controlled by a single empire? Or would it break into a Voronoi diagram of "1 light month" large cells around points of interest?

swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
Is there enough matter for a serious political faction to subsist off of? The total mass of the asteroid belt is calculated to be 3% that of the Moon [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_belt We only use a small fraction of matter on the Earth, so maybe a good sized comet can host habitation. But the solid planets and moons are where humanity could thrive. The gas giants have too a gravity well, we'd need some seriously advanced propulsion to make it off, but there's 317x more matter on Jupiter than Earth.