Friday, March 21, 2008

Communication in the future

I'm currently in the process of world building for a sci fi novel, which leads to lots of research. Among them is this video by Kevin Warwick. I'd been making a far future where everything was recorded on camera.

It occurs to me now that I was thinking too small: if we do more than ID chips, it could be possibly to record all our thoughts as well. Which leads to uploading our 'selves' to the internet and questions of whether anyone would actually die, baring corrupt files and such. And also leads into questions of how people communicate and why.

Communication is generally considered to be 90% body language. So if you have what amounts to cybernetic telepathy, you can ignore than 90%. It can be purely mind to mind. Downsides of this include trying to get the signal from the noise (we'd still filter, even mind-to-mind) and the fact that everyone has weird thoughts/ideas they'd never want anyone else to know, entirely non-logical wants, needs, fears, and so forth.

Ignoring any 'we'd lose what makes us human' since what makes us human is pretty much up for debate/modification, I'm curious as to any thoughts on the subject of what is lost from communication vs. what would be gained.

No comments:

Post a Comment