I hope I don't sound too unserious when I ask my question, but let me
assure you that my intentions are honest, I really do wonder about this
question...
Regard this as a thought experiment (and do not try this at home, kids :-)
In the program of a local (Swedish) Science Fiction conference
(http://www.bahnhof.se/~anglemar/EFSF/konfekt.html ), I found a panel
debate on the following subject:
>Non-human communication
>
>What could a different type of communication look like?
>What could for example communication with colours look like?
>Geometry? Odours?
(my translation)
Just to clarify, we are not talking about communication among non-human but
earthly animal here. We are talking about (radically) different beings who
have evolved under (radically) different conditions compared to what we
know from this planet. And we talk about a qualitative sort of
communication that goes beyond sign systems and into the symbolic domain.
Let me give some examples of the top of my head:
- How could an intelligent gas cloud communicate (the example comes from a
novel by the astronomer Frederick Hoyle)?
- Or computer processes in a network (sort of like sophisticated - but
perhaps benevolent - versions of computer viruses) that have "worked out"
that they increase their chances of survival/reproduction by being able to
communicate with each other?
- Or beings who live in a two-dimensional world (the example comes from the
novel "Flatlands" that was written 191X by XXX Abbott)?
...and so on.
The ability and the modes of communication from an evolutionary perspective
must be a function of the environment and the needs of the beings in
question over million- or billion-year long time spans.
This question is of course very difficult for us to think about and all
thought by neccessity has to be speculations. I think it was McLuhan who
said something in the line of "I don't know who discovered water, but it
wasn't a fish". But perhaps there are some fish on xmca who dare to
elaborate on the subject?
/Daniel Pargman
Daniel Pargman pargman who-is-at tema.liu.se
Program for Human-Centered Information Technology
Dept. of Communication Studies tel: + 46 13 28 29 58
Linkoping University + 46 13 28 10 00 (vx)
581 83 Linkoping, Sweden fax: + 46 13 28 22 99
"There are two sorts of people -
those who divide people into two sorts and the others"