Baud rate is a term used in telecommunications. It refers to the speed of the exchange of information.
In its simplest definition, telecommunication requires two transceivers which transmit and receive information.
Bit rate and frequency are also significant and are also thrown around when dealing with communications be it over wired or the more traditional wireless electromagnetic communications (i.e., radio).
What do they all have in common?
Speed.
Baud rate is the speed of transmitting a unit of information per second. Bit rate refers to the number of bits transmitted in a second. And, frequency, measured in Hertz (thank you Heinrich), is the number of cycles (exhibited in a radio wave) per second.
Yes, your favorite radio station, 101.5 FM is actually 101.5 megahertz or 101500 cycles per second. 101.5 isn’t just a channel, it’s a frequency.
In the interest of good communication, let’s pull this conversation above the noise floor and get to the point.
The purpose of telecommunications is to communicate. To send and receive information. To give and to take. To do this efficiently, transceivers synchronize their efforts by both being on the right channel, speaking the same language, and not talking faster than the other.
Transceivers are our Minions
In life, we are also sending and receiving. We are giving and taking. We drive the system. Transceivers don’t exist on their own accord (yet), we give them life. We give them purpose.
When you sit down in a comfortable chair and surf Facebook, you are giving and taking.
You take in the feeling of the comfortable chair and take the information provided to you in your feed. And in the end, the information makes you happy or sad or even sometimes mad.
When you comment or post, you are giving. In fact, even when you click on a funny video or click on comments to read 72 opinions on a hot topic, you are giving.
Throughout the entire session of information exchange, you are giving to Facebook, its affiliates, and other parties (ISP) necessary to facilitate your device’s ability to get online and render your feed.
In return, they database and analyze your activity and give back in the form of suggested posts and ads that might interest you.
It’s all give and take, and it happens quickly and simultaneously.
This is an example of traveling at a fast speed of life.
The Speed of Life
So here is the hypothesis, a work in progress, that the speed of life is how fast we as individuals oscillate between giving and taking. It is the length of time spent on either and proportional to the level of technology in our lives. It is how the increase in technology affects our culture and our attention span.
Traveling at the speed of life is the experience of give and take felt by the individual. That someone can be plugged in and operate at an extremely high rate or (at the other end of the spectrum) have less tech in their lives and live at a lower rate.
Think of yourself living one hundred years ago, or two hundred, or a thousand years in the past. How would your life differ from that of today?
Instead of waking up in the morning and reaching for the instant gratification of seeing how many social media notifications (validations) you have, what would you do?
Think of baud rate again, a unit of information given or received. Today, our unit of information can be as small as a headline in a news feed (a high speed of life). One headline per second as we quickly scroll down the list.
Or our informational intake could be larger, which would take more time, resulting in a lower speed of life. We could actually take the time to click on the link and read the first paragraph or maybe even the entire article or post.
There was a time not so distant in the past (and this still occurs among some) that people would actually read a newspaper. Page by page, arms hanging in the air without apparent fatigue, they would read every word, even the obituaries.
Speed of Life is Equivalent to Time on Activity
As the speed of life becomes lower, the time spent on an activity lengthens.
For example, without the technological advancements that we have today, how would we have gotten to work a thousand years ago? Not that we would have the same culture of jobs and careers as we do today, but the question remains, how would one get from point A to B?
We would probably walk or if we were lucky, ride a horse.
As you go back in time, and the level of technology diminishes, the pace of life changes with it. Instead of whipping out your phone every other minute to check this or that, you would read a book. And instead of sending and receiving a storm of text messages, you would call on a friend and have a conversation (or at the very least write them a letter).
And what of the future? As the speed of life continues to increase, faster and faster, will we even have a need to walk? Or will we end up like the characters in the movie Wall-E or even worse (and simultaneously cooler) like the copper-tops plugged into the Matrix?
We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?
Understanding the Speed of Life
There’s no right or wrong way. A fast speed of life isn’t necessarily better or worse than a slow one. That value judgment is up to the individual. There are undoubtedly pros and cons to both philosophies of life.
Hopefully, one can understand it for what it is, take the positives, and avoid the negatives. Technology is not bad, though it is enabling. As with all things, balance is good, harmony is key, and understanding is paramount.
(and for those that didn’t make it to the end, I understand, too slow, too long, too… I’ll write a short post for you tomorrow)
