Philosophy on Facebook #18 - The Progression of Communication

So im starting to work with some friends on trying to basically get a podcast going where we'd talk about just random things that we find profound or feel like we can have intellectual conversations about and i feel like it'll be really interesting. Im still gonna be doing the blog but i feel like it is a little one sided where as if i start up a podcast we can get a conversation flowing and build off each others ideas. If we can pull it off i feel like itll be awesome and if anybody wants to help out just message me.

So this one i got inspired to write about when talking to people about making a podcast and the previous post victor wrote about communication that i recommend reading also. I wanted to talk about communication because I feel that without it humanity would still be in its infancy stage and we wouldnt be able to progress at the rate that we have in the past and continue to in the present. Victor described that humans have an innate ability to communicate to one another and also many other things that animals arent as privileged. While animals do communicate through barks and other sounds it isnt nearly as comprehensive as the many languages humanity has come up with. There are many forms of communications. The obvious form is verbal but the major one is physical and body language communication. What we do with our bodies, in a sense, is the foundation for all communication. Smiles communicate to others that you are probably happy and vice versa with frowns.

The reason i wrote this that i feel separates it from victors is the different forms of communication that go on in the world. The transmission and reception of communicated things isnt only limited to organic things though because as technology advances exponentially, our interactions with them are growing as well. It is amazing the different input methods that allow man and machine to communicate between one another. As I type this i am communicating my thoughts through my fingers on a keyboard to you guys through a who receive it through a screen. A lot of communication with technology is one sided but doesnt always have to be as the user inputs are becoming more advanced. You can communicate something into a device whether its typing words, or nowadays with voice recognition software, that allows us to verbally communicate with devices in order to accomplish something. If you are interested in cool sci fi like user interfaces you should check out the ford sync which allows you to communicate with your car while driving to do things like get directions or play your music. There are other examples like microsoft surface and really cool things a dude named johnny lee is doing with human computer interactions and things like the wii that i really recommend looking up. As with computers-human interaction and human-human interaction, you can cut humans out of the picture completely when talking about computers communicating with each other. Networks are what hook up computers to each other to form the internet and their conversations consist of data that allow them to do things such as bringing up this webpage. I like the whole network metaphor as a way for explaining what communication is because communication really does link everything together. Social networks like facebook are melding this concept with humans and computers together allowing humans to talk to their computers and then their computer talk to your computer and then your computer talks to you. By talking i dont mean literal talking but other forms of communication like typing and text visualization. A cool human networking concept that you should check out is Six Degrees of Separation and the idea that everyone is connected to everyone else through 6 people.

Everything that has ever been done has been made possible through communication. There is a lot of external communication that go on in forms such as conversations that allows teams to achieve great results. You couldnt achieve anything between people if there wasnt some form of communication between them. You cant understand what is going on with a person without communicating. Even mind-reading is a form of communication between your mind and somebody elses. Think of anything that has ever been made as an example and i guarantee you there has been some sort of communication in order to make it come to fruition. Communication doesnt have to be external either as a lot of communication goes on internally within your body. The communication hub is basically your brain who tells your body parts to do things. It also receives data from sensors on you body like when you get pinched a nerve sensor sends that data to your brain in turn making you feel pain. It is pretty amazing the anatomy of the body and the communication that goes through it.

Victor also describe situations when communication goes awry misunderstandings occur. The miscommunication comes about when people cant effectively communicate their points to others leaving others confused and not on the same page. One miscommunication that goes on that is pretty popular socially is mixed signals and situations where one message can be interpreted multiple ways and bend the meaning of the communications original purpose. When a girl says that she had fun on a date, the guy can misconstrued that and take it that the girl likes him when she in reality could have just made that statement in order to be polite when she really had a terrible time. Other examples of miscommunication are when you are showing conflicting emotions or indicators of emotion. For instance you say you are really happy but look like youre about to cry (whether it's happy or sad tears) a majority of the time people are going to ask you if youre alright. One form of miscommunication that i am personally affected by is bad handwriting as what I write down cant be effectively received to others forcing me to find other medians to get my points across like digitizing and typing the text i had originally written down in an illegible form.

There is plenty more about communication especially examples of communication in action that I could communicate to you but I dont know if i could communicate it effectively so Im just going to end it here. Hope you enjoyed and if you choose to communicate back comments would be nice!

-Allan Nicholas