Potential Sources

Finding other blogs with similar themes to mine has, and continues to be, a challenge.  But as with anything, the more you work at it, the more you improve, and I have, after much effort, been about to locate a few blogs (for now) that seem promising.

The first of the two that I will list for now is called Decoding Communication.
Although its author seems to focus at times on business communication (about 80% of the "communication" results on a search engine seem to be business related), he has a number of good posts on general human communication.  Additionally, this blog is clearly active, with its most recent posting on Monday (2/11/13).  Although it doesn't have a large following, I hope it continues to release frequent content that I can use/interact with.

The second blog, Skeptical Humanities is also active, with the last post being on Sunday (2/10/13).  I thought at first it focused on linguistics (with many of its recent posts being about "non-historical fringe linguistics") but it appears to contain a wide variety of topics that are of interest to the author.  Although I may have to sift through some posts that are unrelated to my focus, there is potential.

I will continue to seek out new blogs, ever homing in on the perfect sources for my final analysis paper, but these first few have been encouraging finds.

On a Wing and a Prayer

How many ways can you send a message nowadays?  Text a friend, to say you’re on your way.  Email a professor to ask a question about an upcoming test.  The list goes on, but many, if not most of the items found on it haven’t existed for the majority of human history.  So how did people send messages before the advent of electricity, and even organized postal services? 

Those of us that have taken Geometry, or have any common sense at all would know that the fastest way to travel from point A to point B is a straight line.  But with unpredictable, or difficult terrain, getting a message to point B quickly as possible is a challenge, if not impossible.  The expression “As the crow flies,” speaks of the assumption that a bird is not as limited by the lay of the land, and can generally fly in a very straight line.  Because of this, pigeons, also called to as Messenger or Carrier pigeons, have been domesticated and used in communication for thousands of years. 

As early as 2900 B.C.E. Egypt was making use of these birds, by releasing them from ships to announce important visitors.  These useful birds continued to be used throughout history by many different cultures, such as Greece, China, Persia, and India.  The Greeks purportedly used pigeons to announce the winners of the Olympic Games.  Messenger pigeons have also been used as valuable tools in war.  There is an account of Crusaders intercepting a messenger pigeon that carried a message to a city under siege, announcing reinforcements.  The Crusaders forged another message instead which read that there would be no more reinforcements, and re-released it, so the city under siege surrendered to King Richard’s army, three days before their reinforcements came.  (Fang, 2008)

In both WWI and WWII messenger pigeons were widely used, even when radios and telegraphs were available, having 95% success rates.  There are many stories about the birds.  One tells of a pigeon named “Cher Ami” sent out by a battalion who was under friendly fire.  The opposing side saw the bird and opened fire, wounding it, but it continued back and successfully passed its message on, despite having been blinded in one eye, shot in the breast, and having its leg (the one with the message) nearly severed.  Cher Ami and other Carrier pigeons like it received special medals after the war. (Greelis, n.d.)

For a long time it’s been a mystery how pigeons are so good at finding their way “home”, but it is now believed that they use both the sun, and earth’s magnetic fields to navigate.  But how can an animal be sensitive to magnets?  It was believed that they read the fields using special white blood cells called “Macrophages”, but more recently it was discovered that macrophages are not in fact sensitive to magnetic fields, and this confused scientists even more.  (Suzuki, 2012)

In another study, research showed that that Pigeons now also commonly use man-made road systems to navigate, as, it is believed, the path is easier to remember than open countryside.  They make left and right turns at intersections; they have even been documented flying around roundabouts before taking their desired exits. (Davies, 2004)

Clearly, regardless of the means, these birds are remarkable navigators, and have been extremely effective messengers for humans for millennia.  Without their expedient services, there’s no telling how mankind would be different today.

References: 

Greelis, J. (n.d.). Pigeons in military history. Retrieved from http://www.pigeoncenter.org/militarypigeons.html

Suzuki, Y. (2012, April 15). How do homing pigeons find their way home? the mystery thickens.. Retrieved from http://www.sott.net/article/244132-How-Do-Homing-Pigeons-Find-Their-Way-Home-The-Mystery-Thickens

Davies, C. (2004, February 5). How do homing pigeons navigate? they follow roads. The Telegraph, Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1453494/How-do-homing-pigeons-navigate-They-follow-roads.html

Fang, I. (2008). Pigeon post. Retrieved from 

http://www.mediahistory.umn.edu/archive/pigeonpost.html

Whistle while you work

Sometimes you get a song stuck in your head.  You keep thinking about it all day, and maybe you even start to whistle the tune.  But whistling isn't always used just for music.  Have you ever been out in public, and a parent (perhaps yours) whistles for their child’s attention?  Or maybe you were talking a walk in the park, and a dog owner is whistling for his dog to come.  The individual who is whistling in these cases is usually not using the sing-song type of the whistle, but instead, almost a talking, or shouting kind of whistle, that really caries no tune.  But it’s really very different from talking, right?  After all, you can’t speak by whistling… But, in fact, you can.
On one of the Canary Islands known as La Gomera, off the northwest coast of Africa, the inhabitants have been using a whistling language since before the Spanish colonized the island in the 15th century.  Due to the landscape of rocky hills and valleys, the people of La Gomera developed a unique, but simple method of transcribing their spoken language (and later Spanish) into series of whistles that could be heard from up to two miles away.  When Spanish became the primary language on the island, the whistle (or, El Silbo, which comes from the Spanish verb 'silbar', 'to whistle',) changed to accommodate the different sounds and structure of the Spanish language.
The language is made up of two whistled vowels, and four consonants.  A demonstration can been seen below:

It was particularly useful to shepherds, as they communicated over vast distances, but also to the rest of the people, as they often lived far apart from one another.
After the invention of telephones, the language began to decline, and was in danger of extinction, as many regarded it as “something from peasants” (Plitt, 2013).  However more recently, there has been a resurgence as the government of La Gomera now views it as an important part of their culture, and has even made it a compulsory school subject on the island.  Today it is a major tourist attraction for the relatively small island.  It has also revealed insights into the human brain for the field of linguistics.   A study using an FMRI showed that when those who “Spoke” El Silbo listened to recordings of it, the parts of the brain associated with language and comprehension were activated, whereas those who were not accustomed to El Silbo did not even recognize it as a language. (Schwarz, 2005)

This, as well as evidence of other languages such as American Sign Language, prove that humans are indeed capable of interpreting stimuli other than spoken word into language (Although some argue that El Silbo is not quite a full language).
Although El Silbo Gomero is not the only recorded whistling language/communication method, (others have been documented in Greece, Turkey, China, and Mexico) it is the most well studied, and widely spoken of them.
El Silbo Gomero is a great example of how the different methods by which we connect are infinitely vast and diverse and how humans will not allow distance to stop them from communicating with one another.

References: 
http://www.lagomera.travel/en/about/history-of-the-island-of-la-gomera.aspx

Plitt, L. (2013, January 10). Silbo gomero: A whistling language revived. BBC News Magazine, Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20953138

Schwarz, J. (2005, January 5). Shepherds whistle while they work and brains process sounds as language.UW Today, Retrieved from 
http://www.washington.edu/news/2005/01/05/shepherds-whistle-while-they-work-and-brains-process-sounds-as-language/

"Tag", you're it.

So you’re walking down a street, an alley, or by some railroad tracks.  You turn and notice some brightly colored, highly stylized, nearly calligraphic strings of words on a nearby wall, or train car, surrounded by other, similar but distinctly unique graphics.  It is instantly recognizable to you as graffiti.  Perhaps you or someone you know has been unfortunate enough to have had their property “tagged” in the past.  It is generally regarded as vandalism, or defacement of property, as it can be somewhat difficult to remove the paint from a surface (which can be an attractive element to those who are doing the tagging), but just because graffiti generally employs the use of aerosol paint cans or permanent markers, doesn't mean it is a solely modern phenomenon.

Numerous early displays of graffiti can be found in places such as the “Church of the Holy Sepulcher” in Jerusalem, left by the crusaders, or in Rome, where an apparent satirical representation of “Christ” on the cross (but with the head of an “ass”), depicts a man worshiping, and reads “Alexamenos worships [his] God”, variously dated from between the 1st and 3rd century A.D.  These fascinating examples help to recreate an understanding of the political and religious sentiments at the time.

Today, people use graffiti for many purposes. Some simply want the thrill of breaking the law, and leaving their mark.  Others, such as gangs, will use specific tags to mark their territory to other gangs.  Due to these uses, graffiti has garnered an often negative reputation.  But there are many who see it as more than vandalism.

The, motivations are varied, but for many, the walls, streets and bridges of a city are a canvas, their tools including stencils, stickers, posters or paint.  They would not see their graffiti as defacement, but as art, and free expression.  Others wish to use the medium as a tool to project their social/political views.  More recently, graffiti has been used in places like Cairo, calling for the overthrow of the (then) current regime, being an extreme example of a political statement.  It is sometimes argued, especially in the west, that these street artists should have the right to express themselves in such ways, but in cases like that of Kyle Magee, who painted over an advertisement at a bus shelter, the law of the land showed not to support this kind of an argument.  The charges against those caught may range from vandalism, to intentional destruction of property or criminal trespass (among others).  Because of the subjective nature of art itself, it may be difficult to make or enforce strict laws, especially where forms of “Freedom of Speech” rights exist, and thus this style of expression continues. 

But even where Freedom of Expression is barred, the desire to communicate ideas, dreams, and beliefs will always remain.  When all ulterior motives are torn away from graffiti, the need to share experiences and connect with others is all that is left.

Where there's smoke...

I originally wanted to focus this post on smoke signals.  We've all heard of them, from LoonyToons to old westerns, but I thought, "What else can I learn about them?"  Well, as it turns out, not much.

For some Native Americans (and Boy scouts in modern times) smoke signals often followed a general pattern (although different tribes used different signals):
One puff =Attention,
Two puffs = All's well,
and Three puffs = Danger/Help (Indians.org, 2012)

This, surprisingly, was about the extent of information most sources had on smoke signaling, so I realized that I probably couldn't write an entire post on smoke signals alone, but my mind was still lingering in that area of thought.  Where does smoke come from?  Fire.  And fire, too, has been used for communication for centuries.  Now my field had expanded, to places I did not previously consider.

Throughout history, fire has been not only useful, but invaluable to mankind.  Although I could go into countless ways it's been beneficial, the focus of this blog, is, of course, communication, and fire has indeed been used as a reliable tool for communication.  If you've ever seen the Lord of the Rings movies, there's a scene in which one of the characters climbs a tower to light a beacon and call for aid before a battle.  In fact, while searching "Beacons", this reference dominated the top search results.  But war related uses do seem to be the most common for this method of communication.

Most Americans would recognize the line "One if by land, and two if by sea;" (Longfellow, 1861) from a famous poem about Paul Revere's midnight ride.  The line speaks of a signaling from a church tower to warn of the British army's advancement.  Beacon messaging has been used by such cultures as the Chinese in communication across the legendary Great Wall of China for centuries.  They would use smoke during the day and fire at night to relay messages about enemy troops, or attacks. (Chinese Heritage Quarterly, 2011)
Lighthouses are also a type of beacon, used to directs ships to safety, and guide them through treacherous waters, or to a harbor.

While my original concept of a beacon was limited to the use of fire, as I researched I realized that such communication is indeed still relevant today, but instead of using fire, we now use electricity.  At night, in fog, or rain, when driving a vehicle, we signal to other cars that we're on the road, using headlights, and taillights (which are useful in both day and night for communicating that we're applying brakes).  It is also common for drivers to make use of the high beam lights to different things in different contexts.
A flash may mean: "Police car ahead", "You go first", or "Your headlights aren't on"

I could go on about all the ways people use electric lights to communicate, but instead I encourage the reader to take a moment to consider the methods in which they personally employ these contemporary beacons each day.

References:

Longfellow, H.W. (1861). Paul Revere's Ride. The Atlantic Monthly. Retrieved from 
http://poetry.eserver.org/paul-revere.html

China Heritage Quarterly. (2011, July 14). Wolf smoke signals war. Retrieved from http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/articles.php?searchterm=006_wolf.inc

Indians.org. (2012). Smoke signals. Retrieved from http://www.indians.org/articles/smoke-signals.html

Making the first move.

Well, I've typed, deleted, and re-typed the intro to this post (which is itself an intro to the blog) a number of times now.  Is it at all ironic that I'm having trouble communicating about communication?  So in order to save my time, and sanity, I think I'll have to just jump right in.  This is it, no going back.

Hello world.

Over the course of this semester, I will be sharing about the different ways we, as humans, communicate.   Sounds simple enough, but I'm looking to broaden the definition from the obvious, like: Facebook, texting, or Talking.

Sure, I'll probably give these their fair share of time in the spotlight, but what really interests me are the indirect, sometimes impractical mediums people often resort to in order to be heard.  I want to be able to look into the past and find, perhaps, extinct modes of communication, or even look into the future and imagine imagine what's to come.  In fact, the range of potential information is so large, I'm asking myself, "Where do I even start?"  At the same time I hope to continually find new information, unique from the last piece, and worth giving its own post.  The last thing I want to do is bore my audience.  After all, what is the purpose of the blog?  To reach out to people, and have them reach back in mutual interest?  Isn't that the shared purpose of communication?  Stay tuned to my blog to find out!

I myself, am not always the best communicator.  I try, but sometimes it's hard to communicate a thought when you yourself don't fully understand it.  But that's part of it all, no?  If I can help it, I'd like also to use this blog over the coming weeks with the added purpose of improving the ability to communicate.

I think I've just depleted my budget for the word communicate for this post, so it's time to close.  Oh, and if you haven't figured out the title, I'll give you a hint: you are the "1".