Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Communications 104

Communications 104

The story is that Genghis Kahn once told two of his generals… “You take the Western Route, You take the Eastern Route and I’ll descend from the North. See you in Bagdad in three years. (Or Words to that effect)

This demonstrated his decentralized approach to getting things done which was necessary because there wasn’t enough forage to sustain his entire army along a single route. (Hold that thought)

When the computer was first invented they were a bunch of huge main frames in the basement of some activity. However, it wasn’t long before some of that computational capability was placed in the terminals and voila, the desktop was born and more than any other device this catapulted the world into the informational age. We started out thinking, “Hive” and evolved into thinking “Distributed Data Base.” Life uses a distributed database and if you look at the life model, with the exception of certain insects, the distributed approach is the preferred mode. (Hold that thought)

During the Crusades a person could walk into a Knights Templar office in London, deposit a sum of gold or silver and be given a piece of parchment that could be redeemed anywhere in the world, where the Templers had an office. No doubt this draft contained the following essential elements of information. The amount, the bearer, where the draft originated, where it was to be cashed, the date, a means of authentication, and a place for endorsing. (Hold that thought)

Up until the Civil war, wars were managed in essentially the same way as they were in the times of Genghis Kahn. Communications between armies was minimal and accomplished by couriers on horseback or some other transportation means. (Hold that thought) The overall commander expressed his intent on a scrap of paper and subordinate commanders filled in the details.

A man on a horse covering a long distance is a tenuous link as the Pony Express Riders could attest and the invention of the telegraph was a huge improvement. What had once taken weeks could now be done almost instantly. Essential data elements could be passed over wires giving merchants and governments real time communications. Then came the telephone and Teletype and that was the era into which I was born. I got to be part of the technology of the IBM Selectric Typewriter (Where the power and prestige of a secretary was measured in the assortment of her balls), to the stand-alone word processor, to the desktop, cell phone, modems, and the World Wide Web. However, one thing didn’t change. Communications were still that tenuous and vulnerable step in the process between the minds of the sender, and receiver. A man on a horse was still the most secure, followed by a telephone line and in a distant last, by communications that were sent over the airways.

Now I know you are holding a lot of thoughts but here is the connection. Real time communications are not necessary to get a message from a sender and a receiver. There are usually a handful of data elements that are contained on a single line arranged into something called a “Record.” A page easily contains fifty records. If an entity doesn’t want the contents of these records compromised the most secure way is by courier. This approach lends itself to a distributed way of doing things and receives the endorsement of the “Life Model.” Anyone involved in a criminal or terrorist activity is well served by keeping this in mind. The key word is “Life.”