Updated in September 2014.
The Challenge of Communication
We often have to communicate with ourselves to better understand what we think and feel. Then we have to communicate with others in a common language for them to understand our unique interpretation of reality, and relate to it somewhat.
I think the simplest language is chemical. It’s inside your head, in your neurons, in your biochemistry. There are many different kinds of happy and sad and every single one of those emotions has a slightly different chemical signature. We use chemicals to communicate all the time- animals do it too! Chemical communication came first, then physical- gestures, body language.
Both chemical and body language are largely outside of our immediate conscious control- we can mask them, adapt them, practice and manipulate them, but they are still quite involuntary. This creates credibility, and allows us to communicate to each other without having to worry too much about deceit. [1]
I was thinking about maths as a language, how things like probability and set notation allow ideas to be communicated with maximum clarity and minimum cultural interference. Maths is cold, logical, bare and as universal as we can think of. The next most universal thing might be music, but our music is rather limited, within the constraints of our hearing- 20 to 20,000 Hz. What if most of the universe communicates outside of that range?
Creating for maximum human immersion
I think designers, songwriters- people who arrange things- write books, people who create art, create value- scriptwriters, thespians, artists- people who understand how to design inputs- the guys at Pixar, or who create the Disney Experience, or even the guys in KISS, etc- they understand the human experience, and they know how to craft something for maximal absorption.
I’m particularly a big fan of David McCandless over at www.informationisbeautiful.net– his work says so much with so little. I think that’s the holy grail of of communication. To succinctly communicate magnitudes.
I’m fascinated by physics and biology right now. It’s pretty incredible how biological systems have so much in common with everything else- it’s so easy to draw analogies between so many different fields of study, of learning- I was looking at rain drops fleck on my girlfriends’ phone screen the other day and I couldn’t help but think how the water droplets emulate the distribution of the stars in the space in the universe. I mean, that’s the sort of thing that makes me want to become a physicist. [2]
How do we know that the sun will rise tomorrow? That something will fall when we drop it? “Induction” is just a nice way of saying we have faith that things will remain the way they have been. We hae faith that the universe is somehow predictably consistent, that the patterns it generates are formulaic and can be discerned- I think we get a glimpse of the physicist’s excitement.
And then I turn to biology, and I see how organisms grow and evolve and flourish and how they interact and co-operate, how different creatures actually FUSE TOGETHER over time and how it might be entirely possible that immunology and individualism are just…. I can’t even go there right now, because my mind still hasn’t been able to wrap around the idea.
It is so incredible to just try and comprehend what is there- there is nothing in the human imagination that has ever come close to anything as marvelous as the actual universe.
Language again. It’s about expression and communication. About understanding yourself, and understanding each other, and being able to put across a message that can be interpreted with reasonable accuracy. I think a lot of the time when we say “I can’t describe it”, what we really mean is that “I haven’t figured out how to express how I feel inside my head, to you”- but there is a unique biochemical sensation happening inside your head, and it tastes a certain way, sounds a certain way, and everybody feels these things, but struggle to communicate them.
My ideas always seem a lot more refined and rich in my head, yet they tend to sputter and stumble when I express them- and that’s a good thing, really, because it means that my head was filling in the gaps and inconsistencies between the ideas without me realising- and they only get exposed when you bring them out into the open, you only know the integrity of your ship’s hull when it leaves the harbour for open seas.
–
[1] I suspect that emotion is a prerequisite to the development of ‘society’, because it allows for sincere communication. If there are aliens, I bet that they’d have emotions of some kind– in the sense that they’d need some sort of solution to the communication problem. Maybe they’ll all just play it perfectly straight- but then deception becomes a viable strategy. Etc.
[2] Sometimes I feel crushed by the weight of the lives I’m not living. The world is so incredible- the most incomprehensible thing is that it IS comprehensible.
Language, Communication and Designing for Maximum Human Immersion
Updated in September 2014.
The Challenge of Communication
We often have to communicate with ourselves to better understand what we think and feel. Then we have to communicate with others in a common language for them to understand our unique interpretation of reality, and relate to it somewhat.
I think the simplest language is chemical. It’s inside your head, in your neurons, in your biochemistry. There are many different kinds of happy and sad and every single one of those emotions has a slightly different chemical signature. We use chemicals to communicate all the time- animals do it too! Chemical communication came first, then physical- gestures, body language.
Both chemical and body language are largely outside of our immediate conscious control- we can mask them, adapt them, practice and manipulate them, but they are still quite involuntary. This creates credibility, and allows us to communicate to each other without having to worry too much about deceit. [1]
I was thinking about maths as a language, how things like probability and set notation allow ideas to be communicated with maximum clarity and minimum cultural interference. Maths is cold, logical, bare and as universal as we can think of. The next most universal thing might be music, but our music is rather limited, within the constraints of our hearing- 20 to 20,000 Hz. What if most of the universe communicates outside of that range?
Creating for maximum human immersion
I think designers, songwriters- people who arrange things- write books, people who create art, create value- scriptwriters, thespians, artists- people who understand how to design inputs- the guys at Pixar, or who create the Disney Experience, or even the guys in KISS, etc- they understand the human experience, and they know how to craft something for maximal absorption.
I’m particularly a big fan of David McCandless over at www.informationisbeautiful.net– his work says so much with so little. I think that’s the holy grail of of communication. To succinctly communicate magnitudes.
I’m fascinated by physics and biology right now. It’s pretty incredible how biological systems have so much in common with everything else- it’s so easy to draw analogies between so many different fields of study, of learning- I was looking at rain drops fleck on my girlfriends’ phone screen the other day and I couldn’t help but think how the water droplets emulate the distribution of the stars in the space in the universe. I mean, that’s the sort of thing that makes me want to become a physicist. [2]
How do we know that the sun will rise tomorrow? That something will fall when we drop it? “Induction” is just a nice way of saying we have faith that things will remain the way they have been. We hae faith that the universe is somehow predictably consistent, that the patterns it generates are formulaic and can be discerned- I think we get a glimpse of the physicist’s excitement.
And then I turn to biology, and I see how organisms grow and evolve and flourish and how they interact and co-operate, how different creatures actually FUSE TOGETHER over time and how it might be entirely possible that immunology and individualism are just…. I can’t even go there right now, because my mind still hasn’t been able to wrap around the idea.
It is so incredible to just try and comprehend what is there- there is nothing in the human imagination that has ever come close to anything as marvelous as the actual universe.
Language again. It’s about expression and communication. About understanding yourself, and understanding each other, and being able to put across a message that can be interpreted with reasonable accuracy. I think a lot of the time when we say “I can’t describe it”, what we really mean is that “I haven’t figured out how to express how I feel inside my head, to you”- but there is a unique biochemical sensation happening inside your head, and it tastes a certain way, sounds a certain way, and everybody feels these things, but struggle to communicate them.
My ideas always seem a lot more refined and rich in my head, yet they tend to sputter and stumble when I express them- and that’s a good thing, really, because it means that my head was filling in the gaps and inconsistencies between the ideas without me realising- and they only get exposed when you bring them out into the open, you only know the integrity of your ship’s hull when it leaves the harbour for open seas.
–
[1] I suspect that emotion is a prerequisite to the development of ‘society’, because it allows for sincere communication. If there are aliens, I bet that they’d have emotions of some kind– in the sense that they’d need some sort of solution to the communication problem. Maybe they’ll all just play it perfectly straight- but then deception becomes a viable strategy. Etc.
[2] Sometimes I feel crushed by the weight of the lives I’m not living. The world is so incredible- the most incomprehensible thing is that it IS comprehensible.