[TML] Technological advancement

[Terry Carlino]

>   
>> "Get the news before the XBoat!" Pretty soon all of the new services
>> would be using it and no one would care about the outdated XBoat news.
>>
>>     
> There is also inertia.
> NZ deregulated its postal service( turned into a state owned enterprise ) and 
> other companies could set up in competion. 
>
> One company did, I think it lasted about 3 or 5years.
>
> People where use to going to the "Post Office" and setting up the 
> infrastructure of post boxes, deleivery service, etc. proved too much.
>
>   
In the U.S. at least FedEx has pretty much completely replaced the Post 
Office for reliable "it must get there" business communication. Anyone 
who consigned time critical business communication to the post office is 
likely to be out of a job when it doesn't show up on time. Heck the PO 
can't even tell you where a message or package is, even at their most 
expensive next-day rate, which is not guaranteed to get there next day!!!
> People would trust the existing xboat system, they know its reliable, they 
> know it can reach almost all of the empire. Can they be so sure about this 
> new company?
>   
As long as the information is not time critical. Of course time critical 
has a different meaning when jump drive prevents you form knowing how 
long it will take a ship to get even one jump away. But as in the days 
of sail I can see speed mattering even if only in a relative sense.

For example I have two high tech major worlds 20 parsecs apart. By J4 
XBoat (if the route is direct) it will take at least five and a half 
weeks to get from world A to world B. A J6 courier network could get 
there in as little as a month, maybe and three and a half weeks. More 
than enough time to sell off stocks in advance of the sector wide foo 
tree futures collapse. Or enough time to buy up all the brost oil in 
advance of the news of its use in curing krack disease.

As in the age of sail it would only make sense that faster J6 ships 
would, like the clippers of the end of the age of sail, push things by 
jumping just inside the Jump Limit hoping to get new and goods to the 
next big main world first. This would not be the province of the tramps, 
but of the freight liners. And if I was the owner of one I would make 
sure they also brought news with them and I would sell it to the News 
organizations that would be panting for it.

The only way TNS would limit itslef to news by XBoat would be if it is, 
as some on this list have postulated, merely a propaganda arm of the 
Imperial government.
> I'm not sure how stamps where handled, if there was some aggreement between 
> the two.
>
> Of course the new company had to handle to drop in normal post due to the 
> internet which is not applicable in the x-boat example
>   



-- 
TerryC
All that is Gold does not glitter
Not all who travel are lost