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From: R. Kovacs
Subject: Phase boundaries
Date: 25 Cheshvan 5783
Nachmani speaks of communities that do not share a rabbi. My zeyde told me about the telegraph.
Before the telegraph, a question would travel by letter. By the time the answer returned, the situation had often resolved itself. The delay was a feature, not a bug, as it allowed local judgment to operate.
The telegraph changed this. Suddenly you could ask a rabbi in Pressburg and receive an answer the same day. People began asking questions they would never have thought to ask before. The Chatam Sofer supposedly complained: "The wire brings questions faster than wisdom can follow."
A specification is faster than a telegraph. It travels at the speed of parsing. But wisdom still moves at the speed of judgment.
—Shlomo Dov Kovacs
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