Our Easter break in France started with a morning in Bayeux, including a visit to the famous tapestry. With a wealth of engaging detail and high-quality workmanship, it presents the victors perspective on the accession of William the Conqueror to the English throne in 1066.
His final invasion force of 8,000 men crossed the Channel to Pevensey in a hastily assembled and provisioned fleet of ships, moving on to defeat Harold at Hastings.
The afternoon brought us to the coastal village of Arromanches, where in June 1944, the Allies built the Mullberry harbour to land men and supplies.
The harbour was assembled in a matter of days from concrete and steel sections towed across the Channel and was the primary entry point for an operation which landed 2m troops in Normandy over the next couple of months.
Both the Norman and Allied invasions were state of the art in the transport of people and goods. Indeed, even ignoring all the advances in technology over the last 50 years, or for that matter the last millennium, replicating these exercises in by means of physical transport would remain a substantial challenge.
Contrast this with advances in telecommunications or travel by bits (a measurement of electronic data). Sending messages in the time of William the Conqueror involved physical travel and required yet more cross-Channel trips in sailing ships. When the rest of William’s invasion fleet was delayed, his response was to trust in God – no more practical communications remedy was available.
Radio communication was at the heart of the D-Day landings, but the equipment, weighed down with valves, has little in common with today’s telecommunications.
Relentless advances in telecommunications are driven by underlying developments in computing, which bring a doubling of microprocessor performance every eighteen months. Referred to a Moore’s Law (see box right) this trend is certain to continue for at least the next decade, sustaining the advance of ‘travel by bits’ over actual physical travel.
Concorde provides a further compelling example of this shift in the balance of power. We have just passed the 30th anniversary of its maiden flight, and yet Concorde remains state of the art in passenger air travel. Its remarkable to reflect that the first flight of Concorde preceded the first personal computer by over a decade.
It has been suggested that if Moore’s Law applied to physical travel, then by 2010 our cross-Channel ferry trip from Le Havre to Portsmouth would take less than 2mins and I’d get change from a pound.
In reality, a doubling of microprocessor performance doesn’t map directly to a doubling in the subjective quality of video-conferencing or other alternatives to physical travel, never mind a halving of costs!
But the general point is well made, and we are assured of ever-declining costs and better telecommmunications performance. Moore’s Law dictates that for the foreseeable future, ‘travel by bits’ will increasingly prevail over physical travel. And not just for cross-Channel invasion forces!