We remarked that many warning systems are non-linguistic, so that not everyone has to speak the same language in order to understand them. Sirens are international. We have radio and TV warnings that begin with a distinctive sound, but then proceed to a linguistic message. There are now text alerts to let people know about danger. Morgan remarked that there's a special siren in her village for local emergencies. Fog horns are non-linguistic and warn of proximity to rocks. They are a kind of accessibility supplement when you can't see. Kat told us that every lighthouse is striped differently, and also has a different sound pattern and light pattern, so that before GPS systems, their signals were a great way to help locate yourself.
Patsy remarked that for science fiction you would have different kinds of signals given out by space stations, etc. This could be problematic, though, if you were unable to receive them because your sensory array differed from that of aliens in particular ways. What is the primary "channel of communication" (auditory, visual, olfactory, etc)?
I remarked that we often have multi-channel warnings, because fire alarms now come with strobes for people who are hearing-impaired. Fire and police vehicles have flashing lights as well as sirens.
One of our discussants mentioned a school for the deaf, where everything is made of glass, and there are lots of reflective surfaces to maximize seeing. This was an interesting way to make architecture appropriate to the population using it. Kat remarked that our architecture privileges human form. It also privileges the able-bodied human form.
If an alien civilization were to come up with a warning beacon, would it be detectable by humans? Could its signals be harmful to humans? We imagined that certain forms of communication by aliens would make an alien environment inimical to human survival.
People don't always use the warning systems you might immediately expect. In pre-literate societies, people often did subtle things to alter nature, such as changing the route of watercourses, or altering trees. Of course, putting human heads on pikes is a very different kind of warning!
We mentioned semaphore, which is a visual language system, but in terms of warning systems, signal flags are still used. There is an extensive code of colored flags that can send different messages. The quarantine flag, indicating contagious disease, is still in general use. Morse code is still in general use by ham radio operators.
Kat told us that there are specific ways you are supposed to hail people on a radio. You say certain words to indicate opening communication, certain words to close communication, or to indicate repetitions. There's specialized language for TTY systems, which are used for phone communication for the deaf. GA means "go ahead." SK, or "stop keying" indicates the end of the conversation. So if you are at the end of a conversation, generally one person will give "GA SK" and the other will reply "SK SK."
Public announcements have start and end codes. I remarked that in my trip to Lascaux this summer, we had talked about how the cave paintings there often appear to have a sequence that begins with a series of dots, continues through several representations of animals, and then ends with another series of dots. These paintings were made 20,000 years ago.
There are tsunami warnings, and tornado warnings.
Cruise ships have emergency drills teaching you what to do.
We asked, "How do you train people how to react in an emergency?" There are emergencies that some don't comprehend. Unless you have lived in an area where you are trained to respond to earthquakes, you might not know the safest course of action when an earthquake occurs. When people learn to drive, they need to learn the appropriate response to hearing a siren, i.e. moving over for the emergency vehicle to pass. However, you may not learn now to stop if you have a flat tire. You probably do know how to react if you see flashing emergency lights. A lot of people have signal lights they can use to indicate turns, but they often don't! (This is especially true where I live.)
The book Probability Moon by Nancy Kress features an interesting concept of shared reality that relies on very quick intercommunication. For this purpose, she designed a system of communication with mirrors and sunlight, called the "sunflashers."
Does your society have a satellite network? Does it have telegraph? Does it use semaphore, or pony express?
I remarked that my Varin world has a communication problem that indirectly resulted from its zeal for recycling. They moved to a wireless communication system and recycled all the wires from the previous communication system, but when the wireless system failed, they were left without any way to restore the wired system. This means that certain areas of the city are still wired for communication (intercoms), but most of it is not, and messengers are the most common way to get information to travel.
When you are looking at a house where servants work, bell systems can be more effective than intercoms, especially when the messages being transmitted are very basic and repetitive.
In The Sound of Music, the Captain used a boatswain's whistle to call the children. There was a power imbalance in this system, because no one was expected to summon the Captain this way.
You want to have an agreed-upon way to trigger the trained response system.
The system of amber alerts hasn't been as successful as people want, because people generally hate them, but these days very few people are listening to the radio. How, then, do you get your messages out?
Once, people had to make long distance phone calls from the post office. The post office wasn't just for letters, but was a more general communication service.
Schools often communicate with parents these days through automated phone calls, emails, and paper handouts. Each communication strategy has advantages and disadvantages.
We are starting to have things like fridges which communicate shopping lists. This can of course be extrapolated for futuristic scenarios!
Some warning systems are selective, designed to be detected by particular groups and irrelevant to others. One example of this would be a fire alarm for volunteer firefighters. There have also been codes designed to communicate calls for help, as when kids call home to ask for peanut m&ms when they feel unsafe and want to be picked up.
Oppressed groups can have special kinds of warnings indicating they are about to be raided. There was a situation where libraries were having their computer use logs searched, and the librarians were not legally allowed to say that they had been searched, so they would put up signs saying "We have not been searched today," and then take them down if a search occurred.
This, of course, is starting to take us into the realm of spycraft - leaving a flag or handkerchief in a particular location, etc.
It's important to note that linguistic messages in a public space privilege speakers of that language. There are restrictions on the ability to use particular messaging systems. Classified ads are only accessible to those who get newspapers. In order to receive faxes, you need a device. Faxes used to be much more common but now are less commonly used. They are still used in places where regulations make paper trails valuable. Implant technology is another type of device that controls accessibility to messages. I have seen many instances of problems with communication via implant, but not so many instances of physical problems like overheating!
What tech do you use for announcements? Would there be a way to send a warning via 3D printer? Or to send a particular tool needed for the emergency at hand? What if you have set up a system where 3D printers print a life raft during flooding, but only 80% of 3D printers can actually do this printing job? What happens to the 20% who can't? Does anyone care?
What would space poverty look like?
Twitter has become useful for tasks like locating planes. People don't have to know why they are looking for it, but can just "tweet if you see this plane." I personally experienced the Arab Spring via Twitter, and that tool turned out to be incredibly important. Of course, then you have responses to grass-roots uprisings like BART shutting down phone access in stations to discourage protest demonstrations.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the discussion. This week, Dive into Worldbuilding will meet on Thursday, 8/31/17 at 10am Pacific, and we'll be speaking with author Alec Nevala-Lee. I hope to see you there!
#SFWApro
No comments:
Post a Comment