The third way is to process information faster so you can make and
act on decisions faster. Being able to make more decisions in less
time gives you an advantage in both information and intelligence. It
allows you to try many ideas, correct the bad ones, and react to
changes before your competition. If your opponent cannot react as
fast as you can, it does not matter what they have, what they know,
or how smart they are. Taken to extremes, it’s almost like having a
time machine.
An example of the third way can be found in high-frequency stock
trading. Every trading desk has access to a large pool of highly intelligent
people, and pays them well. All of the players have access to
the same information at the same time, at least in theory. Being
more or less equally smart and informed, the most active area of
competition is the end-to-end speed of their decision loops. In
recent years, traders have gone to the trouble of building their own
wireless long-haul networks, to exploit the fact that microwaves
move through the air 50% faster than light can pulse through fiber
optics. This allows them to execute trades a crucial millisecond
faster.
Finding ways to shorten end-to-end information latency is also a
constant theme at leading tech companies. They are forever working
to reduce the delay between something happening out there in the
world or in their huge clusters of computers, and when it shows up
on a graph. At Facebook in the early 2010s