What Do You Mean?
Our efforts to improve how we communicate are gradually shifting away from solving from the physical constraints of relaying messages - to accurately understanding each other.
For millenia, distance was our primary constraint. We probably wouldn’t have marathons today if it weren’t for our ancestors desire to bridge that gap. But our original methods were slow. Runners. Physical postal services. It could take weeks - sometimes months to get a message across.
The next phase of innovation centered around speed. First we had telepgraphs, then came fibre optic. It takes 0.000006 seconds to send a Harry Potter book along a fibre optic cable versus 74 days via telegram! We invented telephones to transmit voice, and near instant messaging on personal mobile devices. As these technologies advanced, they also became cheaper to use. Almost everyone on Earth has access to some form of near-instant communication reaching even the most distant corners of the world. But now that we can send messages in a matter of miliseconds, our attention is turning to how those messages are interpreted.
When we receive a message, we lack many of the cues humans rely on and have evolved to read. So we subconsciously rush to fill in them. But the assumtions we make often lead to all sorts of misunderstandings.
We’ve mostly solved for transmission by overcoming the most physical constraints - speed and distance. But we’re still worlds away from actually understanding each other.
Interpretation will be the next communication frontier. How can we form a richer picture of a message? What additional information can be transmitted across vast distances? And how can we innovate on our primary medium - langauge - to better suit these technologies? Can we invent a superior technology to in-person communication? What would a world with zero errors in interpretation look like - when do misunderstandings actually serve us, when are they most detrimental, and to who?