Tag: communication

The SpeechJammer

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/uploads//2012/04/The-SpeechJammer.mp3[/podcast] As a writer, freedom of speech is near and dear to my heart. It’s one of the basic principles of the democratic form of government. And yet it seems to be constantly under attack, for one simple reason: it’s easy to say you believe in free speech when people are saying what you agree …

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The foundation of psychohistory?

[podcast]https://edwardwillett.com/wp-content/upLoads//2011/05/Psychohistory.mp3[/podcast] In his famous Foundation series (published six decades ago now), science fiction writer Isaac Asimov postulated a fictional branch of mathematics, discovered by scientist Hari Seldon, known as “psychohistory,” which could predict the future. Psychohistory was based on the principle that the behavior of a mass of people is predictable if the quantity of …

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Wireless wonders

Wireless telegraphy isn’t difficult to understand, Albert Einstein once said.  The regular telegraph is like a very long cat; you pull its tail in New York and it meows in Los Angeles.  Wireless telegraphy is just the same, only without the cat. That being the case, the world is filling with more and more non-existent …

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Spam

  Few things equal the thrill, when you first get an Internet account, of receiving e-mail. But it’s not long before the thrill gives way to annoyance, as you discover that much–sometimes most–of the mail you receive has subject headings like “Get Rich Fast!” or “XXX HOT BABES XXX”. Yes, just like your regular mailbox, …

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Language

Perro, chien, hund, sobaka, kelev, mbwa, animush, inu. No, those aren’t the ingredients for tonight’s special at a vegetarian restaurant–at least, one hopes not: they’re all words for the creature we who speak English would call a dog. At first glance, the languages from which those words come would seem to have little in common …

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Future phones

When I was a kid (and though young whippersnappers may beg to differ, I’m not all that old now) pretty well all telephones were black and had rotary dials: no digital readouts, no push-buttons, no “recent callers” buttons or “redial” buttons or “recall” buttons or any of the other buttons that my current phone boasts. …

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Writing

Last week I wrote about paper, and how much I, as a writer, appreciate it. But even more, I appreciate writing itself: the existence of a system for conveying information by putting marks on paper. What I said about our civilization being built on paper is only half true: our civilization is really built on …

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Television

There’s probably no object in your house that is a better example of the impact of science and technology than your television set — and probably no object less understood. Strictly speaking, television really is just “radio with pictures.” Like radio, it’s based on the fact that an electrical current flowing in one wire emits …

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Modems

There’s a rather standard science fiction situation, based loosely on some of the oddities of quantum physics (the quirks of quarks, one might say), that postulates a whole other universe co-existing with ours, sharing the same space, but unseen. Well, in a sense this “parallel” world is already accessible, though not as a science-fictional “alternate …

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