Rediscovering Communication in Electronic Culture by Conrad Dale Johnson

Margarita --

Thank you for your comment! Though I didn't note it in my essay, I do think imagination plays a fundamental role in human communication. I did suggest that there's a deep dimension of communication that's prior to language. In this dimension of emotional connection we're essentially learning to imagine the other person as another person, from very early on. A book I like very much, Vasudevi Reddy's How Infants Know Minds, describes the various stages of this development. The key point for me is that the "you" aspect of existential connection is already in play before we begin learning to imagine the "it" aspect, exploring the object-world we share with others. And the "I" aspect, learning to imagine ourselves, comes much later, only as we begin learning to talk.

As to your term "analogical" -- I do think there are profound analogies to be explored between the structure of physical communications that I described in my previous essays and the systems of human connection discussed in this current essay. Apart from noting that in both cases, "communications systems tend to hide their own functionality," I wasn't able to develop this theme here.

Conrad

Hi Peter --

Thanks for your generous comments; I'm very glad you found my perspective on communication useful to you.

On my first read through your essay I found it rather tightly focused on a particular aspect of spin-measurement that I don't feel at all competent to assess. But I'll try again to pull out what you're saying about the method of communication.

As I understand it, though, quantum entanglement and the issue of correlation of distant measurements applies to any measurement of a quantum system, not just to spin. Does your argument generalize that way?

As to "superluminal nonsense" -- I think the seeming "paradox" arises from the very basic, nearly unquestioned assumption that all aspects of physics should make sense within a single unified structure. Yet all evidence seems to indicate that the way QM describes measurement doesn't fit into the causal structure of Relativistic spacetime.

If we think of physics rather as a communications system, though, we should expect there to be a number of essentially different structural frameworks, in base-level physics. That's because any meaningful (measurable) interaction always requires a context of other kinds of interactions, to which it makes a difference. Though I'm not yet able to argue this very persuasively, I think it's true that if the physical world were really the kind of coherent, unified mathematical structure that's usually imagined, it could support no observable information.

So I'm not surprised that QM gives us one system of correlations between our observations and Relativity gives us an essentially different one. The two don't contradict each other, and both seem to be required to support the kind of world in which things are measurable.

Thanks again -- Conrad

Luca --

Thanks very much! Yes, I think the project of uncovering a rational pattern in the physical world could only be conceived once the Greeks got used to reading and writing as a form of everyday communication. Of course, the long development of thought leading eventually to modern physics was subject to many different cultural influences. But our communications systems play a special role in the evolution of consciousness, roughly parallel to the role of reproductive systems in biological evolution.

I'll post some thoughts on Kant and the idea of "preconditions" under your essay. But to clarify, I agree that physics describes the world as it is, independently of how we humans imagine it. I think -- as you suggested also -- that what's relevant for understanding physics are the physical preconditions for the kinds of events we use as measurements, i.e. events that define and communicate definite information.

The communications systems that constitute our human world are quite distinct from those that constitute the physical world. But both are complex and multi-layered. I think we're only beginning to recognize this kind of system and think about how they might evolve, for the reason I pointed out in section 2 of my essay... i.e. that when communications systems work, it's their content that stands out, not the "technology" that gets it across and gives it a context.

Conrad

Ben -- thanks for your interest and your kind words.

You're right that Shannon's approach has been hugely influential. To become a useful concept in the physics of the last century, communication had to be reduced to the transmission of quantifiable data. What's unfortunate is that "the semantic aspects of communication" -- i.e. what makes information meaningful -- has rarely been connected with the physical issue of measurement. That involves a different and more complicated "engineering problem" -- how to set up the physical contexts that let particular kinds of information be determined. We tend to think of "meaning" as something we humans project onto the world.

Conrad

Hi John,

I take your point about "inarticulate" concepts. My own notion that information depends on contexts of meaning is likewise extremely vague and general -- it points to an aspect of the world's structure that our intellectual tradition hasn't yet explored very deeply. So while you didn't actually sound worked up in your comment above, I wouldn't blame you for being so.

I agree that "everything is information" doesn't take us very far. I would rather say, "all information is communicated information"... which opens up more interesting questions. I'm not sure yet how that relates to the concept of energy. But clearly you're pointing to the dynamic aspect of connections, in contrast to the relatively fixed and stable data-content.

Thanks -- Conrad