5G Is Already Changing The Order Of Time

‘We are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons. We are memory. We are nostalgia. We are longing for a future that will not come.’
These words of Italian physicist-turned-best-selling-author Carlo Rovelli come from his book The Order Of Time, a book on physics that completely turns on its head the notion of time.
According to Rovelli, we should be looking down at the sky, not up at it. We are on a globe spinning and because of gravity, different laws apply to this planet than the rest of the universe. If we live high up a mountain, time moves slowly, if we live near the equator, times goes faster. Even the speed at which we move means time moves itself at a different speed.
Such soaring and beautiful revelations are often promised for our future in the technology world, but rarely deliver. However, as 5G technology makes its slow, but inexorable, movement into everyday life, its impact on time itself and how we use the internet in conjunction with it may be as seismic and revolutionary as anything before it.
Time latency (or lag) in the internet world isn’t sexy and Joe Public doesn’t really care, but 5G has the potential to make it almost non-existent and to fundamentally change the world we live in.
If that sounds like a stretch, it is; but one that can be made. Currently, latency is quite simply the time it takes for technology to share data and communicate.
It takes roughly 20–40 milliseconds to share data on a 4G signal. That may not sound like much, it isn’t to a human, but 5G could reduce it to as little as two to five milliseconds and this minute change will be a complete game-changer.
5G will give people so much more than just an increase in download speeds. It will also supercharge the speed of communication between machines and humans will benefit hugely as a result.
In time (boom-boom), it could herald the biggest step change in technology since the smartphone, allowing the digital world to merge with the real world in ways that don’t seem possible. Consider the fact that the speed of 4G made internet services such as Uber and Deliveroo feasible on a mobile device, 5G is a significant improvement on 4G in every way.
How is this all possible?
Let’s consider previous mobile technologies 3G and 4G. The advent of 3G and the promise of video-calling and video-messaging being possible with a massive clamshell phone quickly turned from hype into under-expectation and then cynicism as they were both unrealistic. Not the best template when describing the possibilities of 5G.
Even 4G let down a lot of its early champions by failing to live up to the hype, those who have ever tried to use their phone in a packed stadium, at a festival or a big gig will know what I mean. The phone may says it has a 4G signal but it can’t use WhatsApp or Instagram.
That isn’t the fault of the app, 4G falls over when it comes into contact with busy locations and lots of data-hungry devices. So how will 5G be different and why is it more than speed that we need to be thinking about?
First of all, the planned infrastructure for 5G is fundamentally different, the idea is to have a denser network of smaller signal transmitters rather than the more sporadic cell towers of 3G and 4G.
These can be hidden anywhere, literally anywhere. In lampposts and digital screens as well as indoors, much like WiFi hotspots. 5G is also designed to handle more devices for each of these transmitters removing the connection problems of the past.
All of this will make data connection more robust and more consistent. But alongside speed and connectivity the big change is that reduction in latency. It is the biggest difference that will aid the step change in technology.
Imagine a world where self-driving cars are on the road but can’t communicate fast enough to avoid each other and other road users. This reduction in latency will make self-driving cars able to react to the real world quickly enough using 5G.
This will also change the way we use the Cloud; at the moment we use it to store and back up our content. But the change in latency means the cloud (specifically Edge computing) could also be harnessed for processing, something that is done entirely on a device now could in the future be done in the Cloud.
This has huge ramifications. Processors are a big drain on batteries, suddenly devices will last longer. People will also want to connect their smart home devices to the Cloud, making them more energy-efficient. A reduction in latency can help reduce energy bills and make humans greener.
The ability to access Cloud-based edge computing makes gaming platforms such as Google’s Stadia a reality, high end games on any device without the big PC or console to power it as it will all be done remotely.
It also means that nascent technologies such as AR and VR can become more accessible as the technology to run them becomes cheaper to produce.
Processors are expensive, remove them from a device and the whole product becomes cheaper. Give someone a faster, more stable data connection on the move as well as at home and AR and VR can be used anywhere, enhancing any experience from shopping to the cinema or concerts.
As folding screens become less of an industry joke and advanced battery materials such as graphene find their way into the mainstream, the technology at our fingers tips can change entirely.
Graphene is a flexible material that allows for folding batteries, changing shape along with the screen of a phone or tablet. When a device is folded or unfolded, it can be a phone, tablet and laptop in one… merging technology and changing it entirely.
The impact it can have on the medical world and logistics will also be profound. It’s true that this infrastructure will take a few years to put in place and 5G alone won’t make it all possible, but it is the enabler.
The potential of this newly accessible digital world is yet to be fully understood. We need to have it and use it to realise what kind of changes it could mean.
For now, start consider what could be done if a connection to the internet was seamless and near-instant. What would that allow us to do that we can’t already? What does it unlock and make possible? You could come up with the next Uber. If not you, then somebody else definitely will.
Until then, we will have to wait and see. And that depends on the universe. Whatever time we are travelling at and at whatever height, the 5G future will come, but probably not in the way we expect it. I think Carlo Rovelli would agree.