Horses don’t transmit atoms as quickly as jets do. Sending a letter to the editor is slower that sending an email to the editor because the letter moves slower. Radio waves aren’t moving faster over distance now than they ever have.

More bits per second can be transmitted in a useful way now than used to be possible because of improvements in hardware.

Things such as wikis made it easy and fast to edit documents without changing the rate at which the data moves. The data is moved more intelligently, not faster.

Otherwise let’s discuss the relative merits of moving your atoms from San Francisco to New York by horseback vs. the train in the 1800′s and today via that newfangled thingy, the airplane. All would get you from point A to point B…but methinks the jet is a tad bit more efficient and has revolutionized moving our atoms around the world, don’t you?

Suezanne, you know there is no comparison of a Wikipedia or Google Krol to the telegraph or radio in the same way that encapsulating knowledge in, for example, your blog is the same as you writing a letter to the editor of the Chronicle in 1950 or being one of the few to be published at any point in the pre-Internet days.