Can We Talk?

I Don’t Know Best How To Communicate With You.

I may never have been able to communicate truly effectively.

It is not my fault, and it’s not yours: it’s language’s. After all, we’re only human.

Allow Me To Offer You A Framework:

I’ve spent a lot of time developing structural concepts relating to founding psychological concepts, technical ideas, biases and economic cooperation plans and their documentation.

Then I find I can’t express them very well at all.

What Is The Issue?

Context: The ideas I have almost always have to do with some technological aspect of communications. (I am a designer in publishing). Today, it is safe to say people could not live without language and technology (including agriculture, of course).

But, the languages we have, although precise (English and French have a LOT of words), fail in communicating my ideas completely, because they are incomplete. Incomplete? Yes; by their very nature spoken and written languages are not exhaustive (they’re always inventing new words, because of this) and they are only loosely accurate. Language is indirect, it is representational, immaterial. The sound of the word ‘water’ isn’t the same as the substance we are mostly made of. So language is loosely accurate, at best.

Language is loose? Spoken words are loose because while I am attempting to convert my thoughts into ideas, then into words, you are trying to convert my words into ideas into your thoughts. See the problem here? It’s easy to see why words and thoughts often get lost in translation using spoken language. It’s how misunderstandings arise, and why they happen all the time in writing as well.

Your context and my context are not identical. Sometimes this completely prevents me from communicating with you–especially if we speak different tongues, or maybe come from different backgrounds or eras.

What About Technology?

Technology can’t understand us at all. Sure, it can parrot spoken words back as text, but it has no idea of their meaning. Now I’m really stuck. You can’t understand me and neither can your (or my) equipment get me either. The experience of this is isolating. In agriculture today this may be expressed through the reductive ‘monsanto’ reasoning that has become a de facto standard (where farmers aren’t allowed to own the product of their own crops). In social media it can be expressed through digital plagiarism and also similar ‘monsanto’ reasoning where now your data and thoughts don’t really belong to you either, but to large conglomerated corporations. We are witnessing all the attendant symptoms of disempowerment, including various forms of addiction, i.e. withdrawal, loneliness, not taking care of business, as well as crimes of frustration, protest, etc. You could say technology’s influence is helping produce something like a global ‘ISOLATION SYNDROME’ of frustration. Hmm, does this scenario sound at all eerily familiar?

Society, including everyone and everything from agriculture to social media, seems at war with itself through language–complete with all the endemic misunderstandings this brings. This is not trivial, as real wars emanate from warring words, as we witness daily. The polarization of politics is just one (obvious) aspect of this which has become so virulent that our own democracies and democratic institutions are figuratively and indeed literally, under attack. The odd thing? We have recently had so much extraordinary technology added to our toolbox; yet contrary to common sense, it seems at present this very technology is making our ‘wars of words’ WORSE and our ironically common sense of isolation and loneliness MUCH WORSE.

Is There A Solution?

Is there a solution? Yes. We are going to need a bigger ‘wrench’: a bigger, better language system. Specifically, we need a (much) bigger, (much) more powerful and (way) more resilient toolset to communicate between ourselves, using technology as our intermediary substance. 

Here is what I mean: remember how I am having thoughts in my head, attempting to put them into words and then you are hearing words and attempting to convert them into thoughts in your head? This actual process is what we must find an effective way to do with machines. If we can teach machines to understand us, possibly machines could also communicate with us and we with them. That means we could then converse with our pocket computers. This also means we could bring some mighty technological leverage to bear on solving some pressing problems. (A few of which are getting critical, in fact).

Science Fiction or Science Fact?

At the moment, the idea of being able to hold a discourse with a machine IS science fiction. For some people, the prospect of this technology frightens them. The principal and obvious reason the possibility of true opulence in our technical and communications fortitude can be frightening is likely because the existing global oligopoly business structure would, if it controlled such a thing, indeed make a mincemeat of our freedoms. Let’s set this one thing aside for now and address the issue at hand. What’s needed to increase the utility of language such that it can be both an accurate means of communicating with machines (and machines with us) AND the beautiful, poetic and emotional toolset that we already enjoy in day to day speech between every one of us?

What is needed is a new FORM of language communication now. This form of language must be about containing the thought or intention, not (necessarily) just the words used. For want of a better word at the moment, let’s just call this language a ‘Framework’.

It turns out that a Framework, if there were one such thing, would not be arbitrary. In contrast, it would present its rationality in full transparency for all the world to see. That would be the only way to stuff it full of features as efficiently as possible. Not a ‘black box’, a ‘glass box’; the Framework provides a form for a pipeline, a shape to the complex hose of communications that runs in potential between every one of us (and every one of our machines). All we really need to define is this Framework because its specification, like that of an elevator shaft, dictates the form of its conveyances and their function, but not its contents. The contents, knowledge or data on or in a Framework is up to us.

What’s New and Different: a Classification System

Framework structure is defined by stability and efficient processing since ultimately it is conceived as a utility: a taxonomy of thought or intention, if you will. It is also conceived both as economical in structure and universal in methodology as possible given certain constraints, namely, people and computers today. In other words, the effective Framework is a universal classification system (ie taxonomy) for the organization of thoughts, intentions and ideas. 

Being of an economic nature means that it may be widely applied without net cost and being universal in means, means it may be applied throughout technologies and with reference to any human direction or activity in all circumstances. What more can be said about an appropriate Framework’s structure? Let’s wrap up today’s discussion with an outline of three specific qualities I observe that an effective Framework must have.

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Three Framework Qualities

1: Crystalline Form

One of the first qualities of the communications Framework is that its form is crystalline by nature. In chemistry, a crystal is defined as any solid consisting of a symmetrical, ordered, three-dimensional aggregation of atoms or molecules. A Framework will have these qualities: It is crystalline, that is precise, ordered, multi-dimensional and self-aggregating. In this way it reflects the natural world as well as our own biology.

2: Suprarational Shape

Being crystalline in form does not dictate the shape of our Framework. Crystals come in many shapes and colors. Its shape may be described as ‘suprarational’, which I define as being both mathematically precise, exact; and capable of resolving advanced fuzzy logic / ambiguity issues at the point of interface. The effective Framework is pseudo-psychological; it has distinctive and commonly well-defined and delineated conceptual ‘entrances’, ‘exits’ and ‘points-of-call’ so that it easily connects ideas within itself. This may also be described accurately as having a twisted pair geometry, providing both built-in grammar and the opportunity to connect long strings into complex ‘ideas’, much like DNA does. 

3: Human Exchange Mechanism

The final critical quality of the communications Framework I’d like to call out today is its ability to effectively exchange and communicate not just thoughts or ideas but transactions, trades and real exchanges as well. In other words, you can say the effective Framework is also a trade or exchange mechanism, working on a granular basis between us. Like any exchange, a Framework must convey both the actual context and ‘living color’ of its descriptions, providing a valid and secure way to authenticate both itself and the named objects it describes.

Conclusion

We need a better language set to solve the rapidly escalating communications needs we will continue to experience in the twenty-first century. This language must provide a combined way to communicate between people, people and machines and machines with each other.

One reason we have yet to launch such a Framework is the issue of corporate control. We propose the Framework will not be built (or controlled) by large corporations, but by individuals and that the product itself will be owned not by any one individual or company but by humanity.

As the issue of architecture is surely an overarching concern, I would like to contribute my development research to the architecture. While it is in one sense ineffable (as I have been at pains to explain through this short article), on the other hand I have given a few clues through a short, 16 word appellation: It is the Reality-Based Object-Oriented Local Personal Quadralinear Universal Fuzzy-Logic Architectonic Rapid Input Ergonomic Data Integrated Knowledge Building System. This term describes everything (and nothing) about it. 

Ready to Learn More? Want to Contribute to This Project?

I want to help build the general communications infrastructure of the 21st century.

Would you like to contribute? We need contributions to help support ongoing development costs. [https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=VZBY2BRA7LJCC]

Would you like to get involved? [comment or email me; we need passionate team members!]

Incidentally, I’ve included a detailed top-level scalar plan of this FRAMEWORK in the back of all GENR8 Brain Paper notebooks: [https://amazon.com/author/brainpaper]

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Bryce Winter is the author of Signs & Symbols of Success, a treatise on archetypal forms including color in the world of branding. He is also the co-author of How to Work With Teams, an introduction to PEAK communications archetype forms and their use in day to day communications. Bryce is the author and architect of GENR8 technology forms, which are described synoptically in this article.