Science outstrips Science-Fiction. Again.

[gridlore]

A few weeks ago we picked up all five seasons of Babylon 5 at CostCo. I've been reveling in them a few episoides at a time (Great Maker, I need to do a Centauri costume) and have reached Season 3.

Where I found a funny.

Passing Through Gethsemane is one of the strongest of the stand-alone episodes of B5, in my opinion. The story concerns the order of monks who have come to B5 to study alien religions. Specifically, Brother Edward, who experiences a series of events that make him question who he really is.

The funny comes when Edward asks the computer to do a search on the following parameters: A black rose, the phrase "Death Walks Among You", the name Charlie or Charles, and a murdered woman. The computer announces that the search will take four hours.

I guess Google went out of business.

Speaking of Google, go there and enter the following: Zodiac, Benicia, San Francisco Chronicle

What comes up, how many hits, and how long did it take? Assuming that B5 has a complete library database, the phrase alone should have led Edward to the answers he was seeking.

Just amusing that they would put up with four-hour searches.

Comments

[eyemage.livejournal.com]

I was assuming that the 4 hours were connection times to off station databases via comlink laser routed through the jumpgates.

but thats just my rationalization for it.

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Considering that real-time AV links across interstellar distances seem to be as common as long distance phone calls are to us, that doesn't wash.

Besides, with a quarter-million sophonts living there, you think they'd have sprung for a decent server farm or seven.

[eyemage.livejournal.com]

most video is shown via gold channel...military dedicated lines...

( this doesnt account for the SNN news feeds though )

so having to wait for open lines to each colony and homeworld networks would take longer i would suspect via civilian means and methods....

also via no fee methods might take longer too...

i agree the station should have massive information data crystal servers throughout all sections....

[chadu.livejournal.com]

I think the combo here of the civilian means and methods, plus the non-Gold Channel priority, plus the size of EA databases, plus the taychon-signal lag, plus the final sort, is what gives you four hours.

Note also Brother Edward didn't restrict the search to something like "within the past two decades", so he's searching through ALL of human history on Earth in addition to all of the history on the EA colonies.

[seawasp]

Given other things we've seen in B5, he might be wise to NOT limit the search that way, too.

[cappadocius.livejournal.com]

Beat me to it!

[jilesa.livejournal.com]

*puts on the librarian hat*

Well, the order of monks is a scholarly order, and while Google can give you a lot of hits in a short period of time, it does NOT constitute a scholarly or comprehensive source. A 30 second Google search wouldn't satisfy any actual scholar doing real research. I always assumed that the four hour time frame involved a comprehensive and scholarly search of information sources such as searches of specialized databases and other scholarly resources (including fee-based services-- not all information is available for free on the internet!).

[eleri.livejournal.com]

Silly, Google isn't just searching websites in the future, it's the core of the entire universes database search network! 4 hours is how long it will take to search every single world!

[louisadkins.livejournal.com]

? In the future, google has advanced so that it searches the universe, not just records of it ? (searching records, so.. 21st century, ug) ;)

[crankyoldgoat.livejournal.com]

yeah, however, we don't know exactly how large the database is now that there are hundreds of other races with their databases also in place.

and, given Google's tendancy to retrieve hundreds if not thousands of irrelevant entries, the additional time might have been the application of extensive AI to weed out the crap.

plus, with limited space to put things on a space station, and preference obviously being given to processes that keep the station working, such a request would obviously be in the low priorty queue for any processors to work on.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

What you and jilesa said. Four minutes to search, four hours to prune the results to the probably relevant.

[seawasp]

The others have mentioned several justifications for it; mine has tended toward the communication lag -- the News Channel was alloted Gold priority for its periodic newscasts because the commanders wanted to keep access to the news available, but things like searching for data offworld? You use the slow channels and be glad you have THAT, civilian!

In story terms, of course, it's a way of dealing with Yet Another Damn Annoying Advance by Science that Gets In The Way Of My Plot. Even when B5 was made you could not really have justified that time lag for a future society if you assumed reasonable extrapolation of capabilities. But you NEED some lag for the story. It's similar to the Pain In The Ass of Cell Phones.

In a related vein, I loved the search sequence in Torchwood: "I'm searching for references on 'I shall walk the Earth and my hunger shall know no bounds' and I keep getting redirected to Weight Watchers!"

[shadowcat48li.livejournal.com]

was this before or after Earthforce began jamming commo? I remember the episode but not the time frame

[gridlore.livejournal.com]

Before. B5 was still part of Earthforce, although the Army of Light was forming.

[jarlsberg71.livejournal.com]

It's funny I loved EVERY Episode of B5 and the movies (the only episode I don't acknowledge the existence of is TKO)

I was psyched on the "lost episodes" till I saw one. and it takes passing through gethsemane and turns it on it's ear. I watched in horror and someone fucked with my usual B5 universe. I didn't like it, and felt it was way too preachy/reaching... (the second episode made me not put the DVD in the microwave)