The telegraph marks the first time communication is separated from the physical transport of objects, sending messages as electrical current rather than as letters or physical tokens carried between people. In 1858, the first transatlantic telegraph cable was laid from Newfoundland, Canada to Ireland, demonstrating near-instantaneous communication across the ocean for the first time.
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The hosts note that cutting undersea communication cables later became a tactic in modern warfare, a direct legacy of this transatlantic cable infrastructure.
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11:59the message from the guy in Washington DC, right? This decouples um physical transport from communication, >> which is a massive deal. Now, >> that's that's a massive deal just fundamentally, right? Like I don't have there's not a physical thing I have to type in a letter and then send it to someone else, right? for for millennia, right? If you if you look at the Babylonians, they've got letters that they send in that are like rocks, right? This is the first time that nothing has to get transferred physically, but just I guess current is getting transferred, but I can send communication. So now information is separate from the physical universe. This is a very big
12:39deal. >> It's a very big deal. If you uh are upset about social media, you can blame Samuel Morris because this is the origin story. >> Yeah. And then >> sorry go ahead. >> No that is the origin story of this instantaneous communication. >> Yeah and the one thing I wanted to say about the Samuel Moore story is that in 1858 um they laid the first transatlantic telegraph cable. >> That's a big deal >> from New Foundland in in Canada all the way to Ireland. So now they're demonstrating >> communication across the ocean nearly instantaneously. And this is now a battlefront for modern warfare where we're trying to cut these transatlantic cables uh to prevent that communication.
13:20Exactly.