The Nanosecond Culture

In 2011 our global society is moving at an ever increasing rate. Our marketing pundits were quick to coin a term to describe us as the "Nanosecond Culture". In telecommunications we have been measuring things in the nanosecond for years.


How fast is a nanosecond? A nanosecond is one billionth of a second. In mathematical terms it can be represented as 10(-9) seconds or 1/1,000,000,000 of a second. In other words it is very very very fast.


Let's try and put some perspective on this without going overboard on physics. We will start with the speed of light since fiber optic communications moves at the speed of light. The speed of light travels at 186,000 miles per second. This is how fast your voice is traveling when you make a phone call on a fiber optic network. The moon is approximately 250,000 miles from earth, so at this speed you can reach the moon in 1.3 seconds.

We are bound by the speed of light. According to Einstein if an astronaut left Earth traveling faster than the speed of light, than he would arrive before he departed. Einstein also said it would take an infinite amount of energy to accomplish this. In our current understanding this is impossible.


Back to the nanosecond. Imagine a one foot length of phone wire. This is how fast light moves in one nanosecond. If the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second then equate the nanosecond to one second of your life to 31.7 years.


In telecommunications we equate fiber optic based communications to one foot equal to one nanosecond. In radio based communications such as satellite, mobile phone and microwaves we equate the nanosecond with one gigahertz (1 GHz). Consequently the speed of transmission with your Smartphone on a 2 GHz network is 2 nanoseconds.


The next time you are on a call with someone on the other side of the world and it sounds like they are next door, try to keep the nanosecond in mind.