Nobody yet knows how fast information will travel in the twenty-first century. Three months ago the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation established a new standard for data transfer by sending a message at a rate of 14 trillion bits per second. In less technical language, that is the equivalent of transmitting 140 complete DVDs every second, or a full year’s worth of viewing in about thirty seconds. In an hour you could send or receive enough footage for a century of nonstop cinema. Or, if you preferred to read, you could acquire the entire archives of the New York Times and the New Yorker magazine-in less time than it takes to yawn. This staggering amount of information was channelled through a single 160 km-long optical fiber. Future networks are likely to carry millions of these magical strands, creating data streams of unimaginable speed. These will almost certainly transform our rudimentary uses of digital communication. However, even at our current snail-spaced speeds, there are cautionary tales as to what might go wrong in this brave new world.
In State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, James Risen claims that
