Everything old is new

A friend and I were arguing in the pub a couple of weeks ago. The next war, he said, will be fought over internet latency. Countries battling it out over the rights to fast internet fibre routes.

Nonsense, I replied. You can’t feed people with faster broadband. Or at least that’s how I remember it. We had had a few jars of ale by that point.

Then today I came across this fantastic historical example of the strategic advantage of low latency in Thinking Strategically:

A famous example … was made by the Rothschilds following the Battle of Waterloo. The Rothschilds supposedly used carrier pigeons and hence were the first to know the battle’s outcome. When they discovered that the English had won, the sold British bonds publicly and thus led others to believe that England had lost. The price of British bonds plummeted. Before the truth was discovered, the Rothschilds secretly bought an even greater number of bonds at the rock-bottom price.

Those who ignore history…

By the way, the book is better than its cover suggests – it’s in fact a readable, anecdote-rich introduction to the basics of Game Theory.

Tags: latency, pigeons, rothschilds