GPS is expensive because it is a very slow communication channel

Host: The lab was almost empty, except for the soft hum of machines and the faint blue glow of a dozen monitors. It was long past midnight, the kind of hour when the world outside feels like a memory, and only screens, data, and coffee remain real. A half-eaten sandwich sat beside a pile of schematics, and a whiteboard was covered in a storm of formulas, arrows, and notes — fragments of someone’s attempt to make sense of invisible signals from space.

Jack stood by the window, staring out at the city lights, each one flickering like a distant satellite caught in the atmosphere. His grey eyes were sharp but tired, and his voice, when it came, carried the slow gravity of someone thinking aloud.

Jack: “Fifty bits per second. You know how slow that is, Jeeny? That’s what Robert Love said about GPS — that it’s expensive because it’s such a slow channel. Three or four satellites, all whispering at you, one bit at a time. That’s what precision costs. Slowness.”

Host: Jeeny, seated cross-legged on a rolling chair, looked up from her laptop. Her hair fell forward, catching the faint light of the monitor like a dark waterfall. She was surrounded by an ocean of wires, devices, and coffee cups, as if she were a cartographer of modern chaos.

Jeeny: “You sound almost poetic about it. But you’re missing the beauty in that slowness. It’s not inefficiency, Jack — it’s intimacy. GPS is like a conversation across the void. It takes time because it’s listening to space itself.”

Jack: “You always manage to romanticize the limitations. Slow isn’t beautiful, Jeeny — it’s costly. You spend billions to make something that takes forever to tell you where you are. That’s not intimacy — that’s inefficiency with a good PR team.”

Jeeny: “But maybe precision needs patience. You can’t rush a message from the stars. Every signal, every bit, is a handshake between the Earth and space. There’s something… humbling about that, don’t you think?”

Host: The air in the room was heavy with tension, and the faint buzz of the servers filled the silence between them. Through the window, the city’s grid of light looked like a vast circuit board, pulsing with invisible code.

Jack: “Humbling? Sure. But it’s also ironic. We rely on this ancient, lumbering system to run our fastest technologies. Self-driving cars, drones, delivery systems — all powered by a signal that crawls through space at fifty bits per second. It’s like running a space-age empire on a telegram.”

Jeeny: “And yet, it works. That’s the miracle of it. Something so slow, so fragile, can guide a billion people every day. It’s like the heartbeat of the modern world — steady, deliberate, invisible. Not everything powerful has to be fast.”

Jack: “That’s a nice thought, but tell that to Wall Street. To aerospace engineers. To military command. Speed is control, Jeeny. Speed wins wars. Speed decides markets. The world doesn’t wait for fifty bits per second.”

Jeeny: “But maybe it should.”

Host: The words hung there, soft but charged, like static in the air. Jack turned, his reflection caught in the dark window — one man split between the glow of data and the darkness outside.

Jack: “You’re saying slowness is a virtue? You think the future belongs to the patient?”

Jeeny: “I think slowness teaches us something that speed never can — attention. You can’t listen to a satellite at fifty bits per second unless you’re willing to wait. That’s not weakness, Jack. That’s discipline.”

Jack: “Discipline is for monks, not machines. The world’s built on milliseconds now — trading algorithms, missile guidance, stock exchanges. GPS is a relic of the Cold War that refuses to die.”

Jeeny: “A relic that still keeps us from getting lost.”

Host: The monitors flickered, the cursor on one screen blinking like a heartbeat. The room was filled with quiet mechanical sounds — the whir of cooling fans, the click of a keyboard, the faint tick of a clock that no one was watching.

Jeeny: “Do you know what fascinates me, Jack? That GPS isn’t really about satellites. It’s about trust. You trust the timing of signals you’ll never see, from machines you’ll never touch, moving through space you’ll never visit. You triangulate your place in the world using whispers from a void — and you believe them. That’s almost… spiritual.”

Jack: “Spiritual? It’s math. Triangulation, time delay, signal propagation. No divinity, just physics.”

Jeeny: “But the belief part, Jack — that’s what’s divine. You trust in the invisible. In perfect timing. In something beyond your control. Isn’t that a form of faith?”

Jack: “Faith has nothing to do with it. It’s synchronization. Precision. The atomic clocks aboard those satellites don’t believe — they calculate.”

Jeeny: “Maybe belief and calculation aren’t as far apart as you think. Both require certainty. Both demand that you hold still long enough to let truth arrive.”

Host: A thin line of light from a streetlamp outside cut across the room, splitting it in half — one side warm and alive, the other cold and mechanical. The contrast seemed to echo their divide.

Jack: “You sound like you’re in love with delay. You really think slow signals and quiet patience can compete with a world obsessed with speed?”

Jeeny: “Not compete — balance. GPS reminds us that even in the fastest world, something ancient still runs it. The slowest voice in the system keeps everyone aligned. Isn’t that poetic? The future depends on the faintest, oldest pulse of light.”

Jack: “That’s… oddly comforting, I’ll admit. Like the idea that beneath all our chaos, there’s still a rhythm we didn’t invent.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Maybe that’s why I find it beautiful. Every coordinate we get — every ‘You are here’ on a screen — is really the result of waiting. Listening. Aligning yourself with something far beyond your reach.”

Host: The servers hummed louder, as if aware of being spoken about. On one of the monitors, a simulation of Earth rotated slowly, dotted with satellites, each orbit a thin, glowing thread connecting the ground to the sky.

Jack: “It’s strange. We built a system to tell us where we are, but half the time we still feel lost.”

Jeeny: “Maybe that’s because GPS only tells you where you are in space — not in life. It can tell you your position, but not your purpose.”

Jack: “You’re crossing wires again — philosophy mixed with engineering.”

Jeeny: “They’ve always been mixed. Technology is just philosophy that learned to count.”

Host: Jack smiled, faintly, the edges of his mouth softening. He walked toward her, resting a hand on the back of her chair.

Jack: “You know, you might be right. Maybe precision is supposed to be slow. Maybe if it were faster, it wouldn’t mean as much.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Speed gets you there. Slowness tells you where ‘there’ is.”

Host: A notification tone pinged softly — a test signal returning from the satellite array they had been monitoring. The screen displayed coordinates, time delay, and checksum. The data was ordinary, mechanical, expected — but in that moment, it felt almost sacred.

Jack and Jeeny stood side by side, watching the slow stream of bits arrive, line by line, number by number — a celestial conversation between Earth and space, between human patience and machine precision.

Jeeny: “See? Fifty bits per second. That’s the speed of trust.”

Jack: “And the cost of certainty.”

Host: The clock on the wall ticked once, then twice. Outside, the city continued, unaware of the quiet revelation unfolding in a forgotten lab. The screens kept glowing, the data kept flowing, and the night — slow, infinite, mathematical — kept listening.

In the stillness, it seemed the whole world was whispering, at fifty bits per second:
You are here. You are here. You are here.