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We will be able to speak with dolphins within 40 years because of augmented reality. 20 for the hardware/software foundation and 20 to raise adolescents who are

We will be able to speak with dolphins within 40 years because of augmented reality. 20 for the hardware/software foundation and 20 to raise adolescents who are adapted the augmentation. The only reason we haven't been able to communicate with them is we haven't found a good mutually comprehensible input medium for them. HMDs could be it, positional audio might help. But either way VR as a metaphor for UI will get researchers thinking in new ways about input as we go deeper into VR ourselves. Presence will be the Rosetta Stone for animal language. "You are here and this is happening" is orders of magnitude harder to ignore as an atom of communication than a computer screen on the wall of a talk. We will be able to record entire naturalistic experiences of a dolphin, and then give them an AR keyboard to play back arbitrary slices of it in sequence, and do the same for their friends. Early dolphin language will look like hip hop music or poetry in structure (a pastiche of samples), and we will quickly find out whether they have the neuroanatomy for grammar.

coldcode 10y ago
Then they will take our spaceships and leave the solar system and thank us for the fish.
xherberta 10y ago
You say "the only reason," but I'm not sure. I think one barrier may be that we're not that interesting to them. Perhaps, rather than sending literal-minded scientists to attempt communication, we ought to send poets and musicians. I read of a recording of an upset, irate dolphin's sounds. When slowed down significantly, it was clear the dolphin was mimicking it's trainer's reprimands. So, one clue is that their processing speed is way higher than ours. I also read of a researcher who set out with a box that could make dolphin sounds, and she wanted to teach dolphins to say names she has made up for three objects, with disappointing results. But I'm wondering... these are creatures that can be taught a command that means "innovate" - do something different that you haven't shown me yet today. A rule of their language might be never to use the same word twice. Also, dolphins are aware of one another's sonar. So, they would never need to vocalize "Look at that over there." They already know what pod-mates are paying attention to. Possibly they wouldn't find it interesting to use nouns to refer to things that are already obvious on the pod's echolocation radar. Their verbal channel might deal with less concrete things like mood, nuance, intuition, and humor.

coldcode 10y ago

Then they will take our spaceships and leave the solar system and thank us for the fish.

xherberta 10y ago

You say "the only reason," but I'm not sure. I think one barrier may be that we're not that interesting to them. Perhaps, rather than sending literal-minded scientists to attempt communication, we ought to send poets and musicians. I read of a recording of an upset, irate dolphin's sounds. When slowed down significantly, it was clear the dolphin was mimicking it's trainer's reprimands. So, one clue is that their processing speed is way higher than ours. I also read of a researcher who set out with a box that could make dolphin sounds, and she wanted to teach dolphins to say names she has made up for three objects, with disappointing results. But I'm wondering... these are creatures that can be taught a command that means "innovate" - do something different that you haven't shown me yet today. A rule of their language might be never to use the same word twice. Also, dolphins are aware of one another's sonar. So, they would never need to vocalize "Look at that over there." They already know what pod-mates are paying attention to. Possibly they wouldn't find it interesting to use nouns to refer to things that are already obvious on the pod's echolocation radar. Their verbal channel might deal with less concrete things like mood, nuance, intuition, and humor.