Thousands of years ago, our ancestors communicated across vast distances by beating out messages on drums. Today we relay messages across the world on Twitter, using our thumbs.

The 2008 Beijing Olympics combines both these communication impulses in a country that is seeing this dramatic shift from the analog and digital. The balance and alternation of signals is a powerful metaphor for much of what we do, no matter where we live.

The visually lavish opening ceremony with its human tableau set on a digitally created scroll was just the start. Bamboo scrolls gave way to print; and in a striking opposite effect, 2008 drummers played out a digital spectacle with their choreographed beats made to look like a LED screen which spelled out the count down. That too in Roman and Chinese numerals. How much richer could we get?

One Daily Mail journalist summed it up this way: “This was a feast for the eyes cooked not from the books of ancient culture so much as the latest Microsoft manuals.” I don’t think this is accurate. It was a feast for all our senses, cooked from a user manual that’s a mashup of the Little Red Book and Microsoft manual.

A few millenia after the drum and the torch, here’s how we send and receive information:

• There’s a Twitter tag 080808 set up by three Chinese to connect everyone’s tweets.
• Watch cell-phones streaming live video on Qik, a service also used by the Sacramento Bee to cover the torch protests.
• Newspaper and TV journalists are blogging to give us expanded, less time-delayed coverage.
• Text alerts (and video) on your phone is available at NBC at NBColympics.com
• Several Facebook groups in support of, and as a protest to the Olympics.
• NBC has a widget you could add to your blog or social network.
• The Voices of the Olympic Games, courtesy Lenovo provides great back stories from the athletes themselves.