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Fine, I'll take the bait.

2021-10-12 · letter vlog · John · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube (also: Personal life, Science & nature) · mode: Personal essay · tags: calendar ritual, self promotion

Taking up Hank's fastest-things title, John notes cosmic inflation and Earth's and the Sun's speeds, then argues the fastest thing he has known is the accelerating flow of information, from pi's digits to the internet, which he only grasped while pacing his friend Craig for 17 miles of a 100-mile trail race without reception.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Challenge accepted; cosmic inflation, Earth's and the Sun's speeds, frame of reference

  • ★ John takes up Hank's remark that many people could make very different videos with the same title: challenge accepted. (playful) — 00:00:00 · Hank Green · first in: 2021-10-11, The Fastest Things in the Universe (Entirely According to Me)
  • ★★ If cosmic inflation theory is correct, the universe expanded faster than light just after the Big Bang, so the fastest thing may have been the beginning of the universe. (hedged) — 00:00:00
  • ★★ As Hank noted, no human had gone faster than about 120 mph until a century ago, unless counting Earth orbiting the Sun at 67,000 mph and the Sun circling the galaxy at 487,000 mph. — 00:00:29 · Hank Green, Earth
  • ★★ John says speed depends a lot on your frame of reference, not only in astrophysics but in everyday life. — 00:00:29

00:00:58 — The accelerating speed of information: pi's digits and internet traffic since 1992

  • ★★★ John says the fastest thing he has encountered in his own life is the accelerating speed with which humans generate and share information. — 00:00:58
  • ★★ For 99% of history people knew pi only as 3.1-something; about 2,000 years ago Chinese mathematicians reached the seventh digit, and 1,400 years later Jamshid al-Kashi about the 15th. — 00:00:58 · China
    • check: the seventh digit — doubtful
  • ★★ By 1946, with electronic calculators, pi was calculated to just over a thousand digits; today it is known to 62 trillion digits. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ About 48 terabytes flowed through the whole internet in 1992, the year John first got online; Vlogbrothers alone now generates more information flow every year. — 00:01:27 · Vlogbrothers

00:01:56 — Upload speeds since 2007; pacing Craig in a 100-mile trail race without reception

  • ★★ In 2007 their tiny low-quality YouTube uploads took over an hour; this video, hundreds of times bigger, takes under 10% of the time. (playful) — 00:01:56 · YouTube
  • ★★★ John's friend Craig, a high school teacher, ran a 100-mile trail race on the weekend of 9–10 October 2021 in just under 24 hours; John paced him for 17 miles, the longest run of John's life. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ Running through forest without reception, John could not text Sarah or check GPS, and realized this was the human story until just fifteen years ago. — 00:02:55 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★ When he fell in love with Sarah, John had no cell phone, thinking phones a fad like beepers; he jokes he has always been a genius at predicting the future. (playful) — 00:02:55 · Sarah Urist Green
  • ★ John admits Craig was pacing him more than he was pacing Craig. (playful) — 00:02:55

00:03:24 — Glimpsing the internet's true speed offline; relief from the deluge

  • ★★★ Only when separated from the internet did John glimpse its true speed: ceaselessly churning, delivering information worldwide as fast as it can be ingested, or faster. — 00:03:24
  • ★★★ John loves the internet and is grateful for it, but confesses he felt relieved that evening to be free from the deluge. — 00:03:24

00:03:53 — Pizzamas hoodie plug and sign-off

  • ★★ John says without the internet there would be no Pizzamas; the Pizzamas items, including his hoodie, are available only for a few more days at pizzamas.com, with all proceeds to charity. — 00:03:53 · Pizzamas

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Craig · Internet

Also: People: Jamshid al-Kashi · Sarah Urist Green

Projects: Pizzamas

Organizations: YouTube

Concepts: Big Bang · cosmic inflation · mobile phone · pi · speed of light · Ultramarathon

Places: China · Earth · Milky Way · Sun (star)

Also centred on Craig: My Truly Mortifying Self-Talk

Also centred on Internet: Watermelon Internet Trolls · WE WON! Net Neutrality and Re-Thinking Cynicism · 19 Ways to Not Suck on the Internet · Is YouTube Good for Humanity? · Logging Off · History Is Happening

Replies to

Later videos replying to this one

Part of an exchange of 3 videos, 2021-10-11 – 2021-10-13.