taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (04/28/87)
Peter Kiehtreiber raises some very interesting points in his recent posting to the group that I'd like to discuss a bit further... > It is quite clear that conventional script is a way of copying, storing > and repeating human speech. I'm not sure I agree with this. It seems to me that we're needlessly limiting ourselves to the vocal aspects of communication. Written communication, by virtue of being able to provide contextual clues and non-standard-English information (like italics and font changes) has the ability to extend beyond the subset of communication that we vocalize. Next time you're talking to someone close your eyes and listen to what they're saying versus keeping them open and watching the gestures, expressions, and other information being transmitted. Certainly there is a lot more to communication than words themselves! Instead, I would like to suggest that written communication is (ideally) a vehicle for the transliteration of communication between individuals to a permanent medium. (a thought: now that we have the ability to videotape discussions, does that make transcripts obsolete? Should we start giving people *films* of plays, rather than *scripts* of plays?) (of course that leads to another interesting point, that the ``higher the bandwidth'' of a form of communication, the more likely that it will be a subject interpretation of the information, rather than the information itself. This is exemplified by the increased bias shown in TV news reporting versus newspaper news reporting, and that versus radio news reporting). > My experience is, however, that written script serves as more than just a > recording medium. It is also a medium of reflection. This is indeed an interesting point however, he later comments: > ...when we speak ad lib, we do not produce, on the average, particularly > profound output. I strongly disagree with this. I would in fact argue that conversations are the most natural form of communication that we have, and that our languages are designed for that. The point is that there is a whole lot more to communication than just `the words we're saying'. A somewhat social example is that at a party quite a bit more can be learned about peoples attitudes towards each other by examining their posturings and expressions than by listening to what they're saying to each other. So with written communication - we can reproduce quite a large set of information in a written medium, but the more 'bandwidth' we add, the more likely we are to convey the ideas we're attempting to. For example, textbooks are almost invariably written using different fonts, with lots of photographs, shaded boxes for key phrases, and so on. The meta-information is at least as important as the information (some famous writer or the other once said that if his book wasn't good enough to leaf through and enjoy, it certainly wasn't good enough to READ and enjoy...) Also, one of the advantages to dialogues, as Peter points out, is that it is a high-feedback system where people can convey confusion, disagreement, and so on all without ever having to wait for even the speaker to finish their sentence, let alone their entire thoughts on the subject. There are truly a lot of subtle cues that are present in discussions. > It's no accident that many animal races have *language* but almost none > have *written language*. I'm quite intrigued by the 'almost none' in this phrase. It is my understanding that us humans are the only creatures on this planet that have a written form of communication. Am I wrong? -- Dave Taylor
chen@gatech.UUCP (Ray Chen) (04/30/87)
Written information has one advantage over any other type. The assimilation of the information can be controlled by the person receiving the information. If you're reading a book, you can, at any point, stop reading the book and think for a while, jump back to a previous point in the book to re-read something, stop reading the book and pick up another book for a while, or otherwise control the speed at which you read. Reading doesn't have to be done in real-time. This, plus the lack of cues normally present in conversation makes it easier for people to see through the presentation of the idea to the idea itself. Contrast that with speech or even recorded speech. I claim that written information makes it easier to divorce the ideas from the presentation of the ideas. This in turn makes it easier to judge ideas on their own merits. That is why I prefer to write ideas down. Paper is a cold, abstract medium that forces me to nail any down loose ends instead of waving a rhetorical hand at them. Ray Chen
throopw@dg_rtp (Wayne Throop) (05/06/87)
Ray Chen writes: > Written information has one advantage over any other type. > The assimilation of the information can be controlled by the person > receiving the information. Agreed, and a good point. > That is why I prefer to write ideas down. Paper is a cold, abstract > medium that forces me to nail any down loose ends instead of waving > a rhetorical hand at them. Again, agreed. But the advantages are not all with written forms. Static written forms have little or no feedback. An interesting point is that computers can add feedback to the learning process, for example, by simulating newtonian laws in spacewar, or by translating morse code to ascii text and displaying it, or by correcting simple math problems, and so on and on. In fact, I had never been able to learn morse code from books and such, but given a few days with a single key and a computer translating morse to ascii, and I had the thing pretty much down pat. (Of course, my skills have decayed again to practically nil, but the point remains.) The point is that, until computers, the tradeoff was strict: written forms had the advantage of control in the hands of the reader, and spoken forms had the advantage of feedback. Computer mediated forms have some potential, largely unrealized as yet in any widespread way, to combine some of the strengths of the two forms. Wayne Throop
taylor@hplabsc.UUCP (05/16/87)
[Sorry for the delay; I've just looked into `comp.society' yesterday after some time. Lots of work to do...] Hi, Dave! This is a continuation of our discussion on the Importance Of Literacy. [>> = me, > = you] >> It is quite clear that conventional script is a way of copying, storing >> and repeating human speech. >I'm not sure I agree with this. It seems to me that we're needlessly >limiting ourselves to the vocal aspects of communication. Written >communication, by virtue of being able to provide contextual clues and >non-standard-English information (like italics and font changes) has the >ability to extend beyond the subset of communication that we vocalize. Stress markings like italics, font changes, underlining etc. are just the writing equivalent of raising your voice, whispering or `speaking impressively', which in my mind is an integral part of `human speech'. Now, adorning text with pictures goes beyond this, but then that is not what I would call `conventional script'. >Next time you're talking to someone close your eyes and listen to what >they're saying versus keeping them open and watching the gestures, >expressions, and other information being transmitted. Certainly there >is a lot more to communication than words themselves! No disagreement here, for sure. One very important "nonverbal" aspect of communication, both spoken and written, is *context*. The same words, and even the same gestures, can carry radically different meanings depending on who generates them, where, when and how, and who receives (and interpretes) them. >Instead, I would like to suggest that written communication is (ideally) a >vehicle for the transliteration of communication between individuals to >a permanent medium. Of course. However, I was not discussing `written communication' in general, I was talking about `conventional script'. Besides, I'm not so sure about the `permanent' part. When I write a mail message to Hubby about tonight's soccer game, there isn't much permanence in it (no matter whether it's written on paper or by electronic means). Script (written words) can be used equivalently to spoken words, though the interactive element is largely lost. To qualify as a `permanent recording' of communication, it must be divorced (or divorcible) from the immediate context of both the originator and the intended recipient. (But then you were just saying `to a permanent medium', so maybe we agree here after all.) > (a thought: now that we have the ability to videotape >discussions, does that make transcripts obsolete? Should we start giving >people *films* of plays, rather than *scripts* of plays?) (of course that >leads to another interesting point, that the ``higher the bandwidth'' of >a form of communication, the more likely that it will be a subject >interpretation of the information, rather than the information itself. Be careful with the `bandwidth' issue. We must distinguish between the theoretical carrier capacity of an information channel and what of this capacity is actually used (and usable). In a purely information-theoretical sense, a TV set can transmit dozens of times as much as a voice channel (geared to human voice frequencies). In reality, this factor is severely restricted by the human ability to *take in* information. Try to play a VCR-recording to someone and afterwards ask questions about `peripheral information' transmitted - like the color of a car or even the number of people they saw in a scene. Our minds are trained (by necessity) to screen out most of what our sensory systems deliver. This applies to optical and acoustic systems (seeing and hearing) alike, of course; yet the optical system, bringing in MUCH more raw data, is skimmed much more discriminatingly. We are generally more likely to remember a `peripheral' sound than a `peripheral' image. Part of the basic operation of human speech is that we *actively concentrate* on what is said; in a way, we switch to a `narrow band' within the acoustical channel but in exchange we get (almost) everything that is in there. Consider: if you just talk at someone who doesn't expect you to, he'll probably ask you to repeat the first few words (or reconstruct them from what you go on to say) - he had to switch to `speech reception' mode first. Conversely, we are apt to ignore non-speech noises while listening to words. What I am getting at is that to get such a `speech-like' effect in picture (sight) transmission, you would have to create a similar `concentration effect' on the optical channel. A human is physiologically incapable of taking in a whole TV picture instantanously (let alone the whole sight arena). There is this classical `dot experiment' that demonstrates that on instant pictures, a human can't count more than seven to nine independent things at one time. (The sign language of deaf people is such a `concentration device'; it doesn't go significantly beyond what the spoken word can achieve.) Of course, the `peripheral information' in, e.g., a TV picture is not completely lost. Our brains just take all this `non-central' information (where what is `central' is determined by the picture AND by context) and reduce it to an acceptable amount. (E.g., many people running around, shouting, fire => danger, panic, excitement; details are completely lost.) So while in theory you could transmit MUCH more information via (TV-like) images, in reality you are just PRODUCING much more information that gets boiled down to essentials by the viewer. This CAN be a good thing; it tends to add versimilitude (and thus, in a way, credibility) and requires much less active involvement (imagination, deduction, consideration) from the viewer. It does just not automatically transfer more USABLE information per time unit. Remark 1: If you transmit a still picture and give the viewer as long as (s)he needs, you can indeed use much of the available bandwidth. Of course, the recipient will take rather long to take in the whole thing. Note that this approach again loses the `interactive' feature, giving it something of the same limitations as `conventional script'. Remark 2: The above are (often gross) simplifications. If you're interested, we can discuss this further. But now on with your article: >> ...when we speak ad lib, we do not produce, on the average, particularly >> profound output. >I strongly disagree with this. I would in fact argue that conversations >are the most natural form of communication that we have, and that our >languages are designed for that. The point is that there is a whole lot >more to communication than just `the words we're saying'. A somewhat >social example is that at a party quite a bit more can be learned about >peoples attitudes towards each other by examining their posturings and >expressions than by listening to what they're saying to each other. I'm not sure where the disagreement lies. Conversations are indeed the most natural form of communication (being the oldest one), and our *speaking languages* are indeed designed (or rather evolved) for it. Surely you know that there are distinctive differences between the language we use for conversations (i.e., spoken dialogue) and the one we use for written communications. What I was saying is that the *context-independent information contents* (per time unit) of conversational speech is rather low. Think about it. After all, we must put ideas and concepts into it as fast as we can speak (we do not customarily insert significant pauses into our conversations) and we always have the `online' feedback to correct, enhance and embellish our information when we find that it hasn't been received correctly. (In fact, if both speakers are familiar with each other, this allows VERY compact exchange of ideas because you don't have to take precautions for misunderstandings and can in a way transmit `deltas' to the common base of concepts - you end up speaking in (for outsiders) disconnected phrases. Here's to context again.) I'm not trying to put down conversation as a means of information exchange - I'm just saying that any individual thread of conversation is likely to have low real information contents *in itself*, compared to a (well) prepared written message. >So with written communication - we can reproduce quite a large set of >information in a written medium, but the more 'bandwidth' we add, the >more likely we are to convey the ideas we're attempting to. For >example, textbooks are almost invariably written using different fonts, >with lots of photographs, shaded boxes for key phrases, and so on. You are right, of course. Remember, though, that `bandwidth' is defined as *information contents per time unit*. If you have to look at a page with twice the information twice as long, you haven't increased the bandwidth at all. Of course, it may still be *easier* and *more enjoyable*, distinct improvements for sure. >The meta-information is at least as important as the information (some >famous writer or the other once said that if his book wasn't good enough >to leaf through and enjoy, it certainly wasn't good enough to READ and >enjoy...) If pictures are used to *illustrate* and *embellish* the written word rather than provide *additional information*, then they are used to provide additional or easier *access* to the information on the page, rather than increase the total amount of information contained. This may be a worthwhile effort (especially for children's books!), but is a rather different aim than *increasing the information contents*. There's no question that showing a picture of, say, a torus makes the concept of `torus' easier to access and comprehend than a verbal description. You pay with a need for higher physical bandwidth - no free lunches here. So, to a certain degree, you CAN trade additional information creation and transmission effort for easier assimilation - though you aren't really transmitting more information in the first place, you just provide some explicitly that the receiver could have worked out himself with some effort. -- << Perry The Cynic >> =>> perry@inteloa.intel.com <<= ...!tektronix!ogcvax!omepd!inteloa!perry (Peter Kiehtreiber) ...!verdix!omepd!inteloa!perry