Saturday, May 16, 2009

communicating in/through a black hole

So everyone says that there's thing called the information paradox about the black hole. 
I'm going to digress a bit from that right now and come back to it later in this blog with a different take than physical or digital loss of information. 

The issue really is- how should we communicate? Why is communication important in the first place? I think communication helps us learn, more than anything else. If we share our thoughts with someone, we may get feedback on whether what we are thinking is right or wrong. It is important to check out for our wrong doings with other people at times (not always, sometimes you just know too well about whether you are right or wrong, or somewhere in between).
The second type of learning, is more important; it is basically learning through other people's thoughts and ideas and experiences. If you know about how someone handled a situation, you may get inspired to act in a similar manner or you may want to avoid that act, based on your judgement(which may not always be correct). [BTW, i don't know why i am writing this at this time of the night !). This type of learning is more important because you are learning something new, something different. Which is what life is all about... 
I think i am going to end the discussion on why communication is important here... 
oh actually, let me add something else. Its important for scientists, because, somehow, working on a physics/mathematics problem together with someone and having the Eureka moment with that someone can enrich you probably more than if you were doing it all alone in isolation... so thats the end to why communication is important.

Now, communication has been an ever changing phenomenon. Imagine how the first hominids would communicate with each other. They would probably have a mixture of hand gestures with some sort of syllables to do that. That would be interesting to observe. Moving on, the first few languages would be similar to ours, except, I think they would be less organised.. and people might be creating their own words all the time... but the purpose would remain the same-to communicate, to let the other person know about what one was thinking. Going further on in time, much further on, in fact. When the first few languages would have been firmly established, hmm... i'm not sure how that would have went... it would have probably been very similar to our spoken language system today. I think writing came after speaking, just like it does for a child. Ok, moving on again. During the 19th and 20th century, almost everyone had perfected the art of speaking, though writing i think would have been limited to those who received education. Letters were written, long letters indeed.. even to communicate about the weekly happenings, one would communicate by letters... with a person sitting on the other side of the state or country, or even across borders. Then came the telephone, aha! an invention that brought personalization... the tone of voice communicated feelings and thoughts... hmm yes, emotions are another important part of communication. So when the telephone arrived, or actually about 10-20 years after that, i.e. when it became cheap enough to call people to talk about weekly or daily happenings, people found it easier to convey emotions through voice, than words on paper... interesting... pretty interesting.. and then came the very unusual, very different, yet very addictive form of communication, the Internet... now, I've take na logarithmic jump from the time of the invention of the telephone to the IMing online... but its not that big a difference because I probably understand and know more about this form of communication than any other that I have talked about already. So what's so unusual about it? Well, its similar to the telephone, u can communicate instantly. But still, why do people prefer to chat online than talk on the phone? Why?

Well, one possible reason could be that they find it cheap. But thats probably not a very good reason, I think that it doesn't really have much evidence backing it. I think that the real reason is that it is easier to type words and hide your face behind a computer screen than call someone and let your true emotions show. It really is, or at least I think so. Plus, you get the advantage of communicating instantly.. Well, that maybe good/bad, cause one makes hasty decisions at times... a line once typed onto the IM screen and sent, cannot be recalled , similar to a line spoken on a phone.. But there's this factor of physical detachment. One doesn't need to be too self conscious about what one is doing while chatting with a friend online, one's facial expressions are hidden, at least until one decides to use emoticons, which might as well be fake. Its a mask that allows us to say whatever we want to.. but when we come face to face with that someone we've been talking to online all the time, its a different ball game altogether.. One has to conscious of what one's facial expression is and what body language is one using.. it complicates matters... hmm.. hmm... so it is easier to hide behind a computer screen and write a blog than to talk to a friend about it... very very interesting indeed... I think I missed out using the why people need to communicate in this side of the blog post. But I think that the essence of what I wanted to say has been captured fully. Cool! .. See, its easier for me to write this blog than to talk to a group of potential friends face to face.. But some day, I would have to do that too! and then, at the time of reckoning ... all this blogging might be of no more use than providing me with words, the facial expression and body language part would have to be improvised.. hmm... that would be difficult, but oh well. What in this world is not difficult? And if something is difficult, you learn more!!! cool!

oh yes, coming back to the information being lost in a black hole paradox... Well, people say that once some information goes into a black hole... its lost forever... but the thing is, that someone wrote that thing done... it would still exist in that someone's head, at least if that person is alive and hasn't lost his/her memory. But even if knowledge is lost, man is such a curious animal, that he will rediscover it... Even if all of our libraries and internet get lost in a black hole, man will rewrite them, and better still rediscover truths... and who knows, man might come up with something more feasible and sensible than what was written down in those encyclopedia.

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