4 ms·

Re: Ham radio. It goes back further than living memory, to telegraph operators. They also used morse. And I have the impression that some aspects of unix termin

Re: Ham radio. It goes back further than living memory, to telegraph operators. They also used morse. And I have the impression that some aspects of unix terminals derive from those days... Edison grew up in those times, commercializing as much as he could. Yet hackers continued, as they do today. Though perhaps we've reached the end of the road with communications - the interconnected net of networks seems all encompassing, like globalization and the end of history. Can there be any new, technically difficult means of communication?

veddox 11y ago
> Can there be any new, technically difficult means of communication? I'm assuming you meant "technically different"? Either way: I can't think of any, but given the last few millenia of progress, it seems unlikely that we've reached the peak.
- hyperpallium 11y ago
  No, technically difficult. Otherwise, hackers are overrun by everyone else. Telegraph, ham radio, early computers were all technically difficult. Although new modes of communication are still coming - eg twitter, vine - they aren't technically difficult to use.
  - eru 11y ago
    I guess there can be means of communication that are technically different at any one point in time.
bshanks 11y ago
* transmission of qubits * technology-mediated telepathy * darknets * internet-of-things * space internet * network communication to support pervasive augmented reality * various new forms of symbolic communication supporting collaborative cognition (eg argument mapping in a way that allows a community to have a debate without any individual participant understanding all the details of either side; eg systems for an online community to speak in real-time through a human representative via voting on what the rep is to say) * various new forms of technology-enabled language (eg going to a party and seeing a person talking and as they talk, around them appears various projected icons offering nuance, more information, or structured conversational protocol information regulating eg turn-taking; eg a form of language in which neither human understands all of the words they use, but in which both are using a computer assistant in the manner of computer-assisted chess) * lowtech versions of advanced communications protocols, practiced by survivalists in case of an apocalypse and/or by people who want privacy from online surveillance (not that this would help unless there is no IRL surveillance in the vicinity), eg human-mediated blockchains, eg sneakernet message routing (eg Pynchon's Crying of Lot 39's Trystero), eg encryption by hand. And then variants of these which can interoperable with the electronic/high-tech versions. * communication mediated by networks of AIs that dynamically modify/invent new communications protocols Doubtful that all of those will be feasible/useful but probably some of them will be. I imagine that most of these will be difficult to use, at least at first.

veddox 11y ago

> Can there be any new, technically difficult means of communication? I'm assuming you meant "technically different"? Either way: I can't think of any, but given the last few millenia of progress, it seems unlikely that we've reached the peak.

hyperpallium 11y ago
No, technically difficult. Otherwise, hackers are overrun by everyone else. Telegraph, ham radio, early computers were all technically difficult. Although new modes of communication are still coming - eg twitter, vine - they aren't technically difficult to use.
- eru 11y ago
  I guess there can be means of communication that are technically different at any one point in time.

bshanks 11y ago

* transmission of qubits * technology-mediated telepathy * darknets * internet-of-things * space internet * network communication to support pervasive augmented reality * various new forms of symbolic communication supporting collaborative cognition (eg argument mapping in a way that allows a community to have a debate without any individual participant understanding all the details of either side; eg systems for an online community to speak in real-time through a human representative via voting on what the rep is to say) * various new forms of technology-enabled language (eg going to a party and seeing a person talking and as they talk, around them appears various projected icons offering nuance, more information, or structured conversational protocol information regulating eg turn-taking; eg a form of language in which neither human understands all of the words they use, but in which both are using a computer assistant in the manner of computer-assisted chess) * lowtech versions of advanced communications protocols, practiced by survivalists in case of an apocalypse and/or by people who want privacy from online surveillance (not that this would help unless there is no IRL surveillance in the vicinity), eg human-mediated blockchains, eg sneakernet message routing (eg Pynchon's Crying of Lot 39's Trystero), eg encryption by hand. And then variants of these which can interoperable with the electronic/high-tech versions. * communication mediated by networks of AIs that dynamically modify/invent new communications protocols Doubtful that all of those will be feasible/useful but probably some of them will be. I imagine that most of these will be difficult to use, at least at first.