Why are Web technologies trying to compress data better if internet speeds are becoming faster?

Question

Why are Web technologies trying to compress data better if internet speeds are becoming faster?

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Answer 1

“Information Theory” is the science that guides our understanding of digital communications and storage.

Put simply, advances in information theory allow us to do two things: send bits faster (or store them denser), and say more useful pieces of information with fewer bits (compression).

Without working on this problem from both ends there’s no way we’d be able to make internet media work as well as it does. It gets even more dire when you remove wires from the equation.

Edit: I forgot to mention the most important part about compression. It makes the internet cheaper to operate for the same user experience. In engineering, decisions almost always come down to cost!

Answer 2

“Information Theory” is the science that guides our understanding of digital communications and storage.

Put simply, advances in information theory allow us to do two things: send bits faster (or store them denser), and say more useful pieces of information with fewer bits (compression).

Without working on this problem from both ends there’s no way we’d be able to make internet media work as well as it does. It gets even more dire when you remove wires from the equation.

Edit: I forgot to mention the most important part about compression. It makes the internet cheaper to operate for the same user experience. In engineering, decisions almost always come down to cost!