Data storage and transmission are the same thing. Both are communication to the future, (though sometimes to the very very near future). Over long enough distances, radio and wires can be information storage. Like all storage media, they aren’t permanent, and need to be refreshed periodically. For waves, this period is short, microseconds to hours. For more traditional storage (clay tablets or engraved gold discs sent to space, for instance), it could be decades to millenea.
Traffic is quite lossy as an information medium—effects remain for hours, but there are MANY possible causes of the same effects, and hard-to-predict decay and reinforcement rates, so it only carries a small amount of information: something happened in the recent past. Generally, this is a good thing—most of us prefer that we’re not part of that somewhat costly information storage, and we pay traffic engineers and car designers a great deal of money to minimize information retention in our roads.
Data storage and transmission are the same thing. Both are communication to the future, (though sometimes to the very very near future). Over long enough distances, radio and wires can be information storage. Like all storage media, they aren’t permanent, and need to be refreshed periodically. For waves, this period is short, microseconds to hours. For more traditional storage (clay tablets or engraved gold discs sent to space, for instance), it could be decades to millenea.
Traffic is quite lossy as an information medium—effects remain for hours, but there are MANY possible causes of the same effects, and hard-to-predict decay and reinforcement rates, so it only carries a small amount of information: something happened in the recent past. Generally, this is a good thing—most of us prefer that we’re not part of that somewhat costly information storage, and we pay traffic engineers and car designers a great deal of money to minimize information retention in our roads.