09.18.2017
- Weaver talks a fair amount about redundancy in language, and how it helps make the crossword interesting as a form of play (p34). From a communication technology standpoint, it makes sense to have this sort of redundancy built into a system, in large part to work around any type of noise introduce int a transmission. you see this redundancy reflected throughout computing, particularly as one moves from discrete commands to higher level abstractions. In programming languages, for example, Assembly is as “close to the metal” as you can get with ‘natural’ language, and has a very limited command set. As one moves higher up the chain in abstraction, you’ll find redundancy in commands and instructions. C, C++, Java, javascript, etc. have a lot of redundancy, and allow a programmer multiple avenues of formulating a command. The common adage is “There’s more than one way to do it”, or TMTOWTDI. While this allows a programmer the ability to write programs/commands in whatever fashion they desire, it leads to computational inefficiency. How can we determine when this inefficiency outweighs the speed of communication? Is there another axis of information that can speak to this? (I’m thinking specifically of the difference between TCP and UDP, in that TCP is highly redundant and used for low bandwidth/high information (per byte) communication like text, whereas UDP is used for High bandwith/low information (per byte) data like video). Relatedly, this redundancy in language offers one the opportunity to write in a larger stylistic format than a narrow, less redundant form. Though this may be the illusion of freedom, as it is still bound to the conventions of the language and base instruction set, it’s something to note.
- Turing wraps his entire Imitation Game hypothesis in gendered terms. It’s almost like a tease. A a gay man in Britan, he had to express himself one way publicly, while living a private life that was quite different. Was this a coded message in the article, or an unconscious form of expression? Was he trying to parse for himself how to adapt and signal who he truly was in a repressive society? Is the mathematical challenge he set up for himself here ultimately a social one?
- The models Weaver present and the Eames’ use in their communication diagrams clearly indicate the source, encoding, transmission, decoding and reception. It reminds me of Jim Campbell’s “formula for computer art” except that the communication theory misses the algorithm and memory aspects of the systems. It’s possible to extend the system to include these processes on either end (origin of transmission or reception of transmission) in an effort to indicate what happens when intention and understanding are incorporated into these ideas of communication.
