Clacks question

[SimStars13]

On the blurb thing for the tv adaptation of Going Postal, it said that the clacks were like the internet, wheras I thought they were more like the telegraph system.
Which is right? And what do you think?

Thanks

 

[Tonyblack]

Actually, I'd say the Clacks was a semaphore system. Before telegraphs were invented, semaphore was used fairly effectively. It was certainly used in the Napoleonic Wars.

Where the Clacks is like the Internet is in the fact that it is a revolution in communication for the Discworld.

For the first time people are able to contact each other from one side of the Disc to the other is a reasonably quick time.

It doesn't work like the Internet, but it does bring people closer together in much the way that the Internet does.

I think Terry is using it as a parody of the Internet in much the same way that iconograph devices are parodies of cameras and the Gooseberry in Thud is a parody of Blackberries in our own world.

 

[SimStars13]

Why thank you tomyblack. That's very interesting

 

[Doughnut Jimmy]

Absolutely - whatever the technicalities of how it works the change in communication has simmilar possibilities. There's a book called "The Victorian Internet" by Tom Standage that is all about the Telegraph and it's effects - quite interesting

 

[mystmoon]

The technobabble is similar too (at least to an outsider)

 

[Tina a.k.a.SusanSto.Helit]

Yup. The transferring of numbers into pictures is another example. I simply adore the sarcastic parody.

 

[kakaze]

I would say that, in use, it's more like a telegraph (in that information is sent from point A to point B and is not publicly accessible).

However, in function, it could work more like email in that they could use multiple towers to pass the info along in case a tower failed for some reason (such as a witch flying into the tower).