interpretation as the next frontier in tech enabled communication
Our efforts to improve communication are gradually shifting away from overcoming the physical constraints of message delivery toward accurately understanding each other.
For millennia, distance was the primary constraint. We probably wouldn’t have marathons today if our ancestors hadn't been motivated to bridge that gap. But their original methods were slow: runners, physical postal services. It could take weeks - even months - for a message to reach its destination.
The next phase of innovation focused on speed. First came the telegraph, then fibre optics. It would take 74 days to send a Harry Potter book via telegram versus ~0.000006 seconds along a fibre optic cable! We invented telephones to transmit voice, then instant messaging on personal mobile devices. As these technologies advanced, they became cheaper and more widely accessible. Today, most people have access to tools that allow them to communicate almost instantly across the most distant corners of Earth.
Now that we can transmit voice and text instantly, our attention is turning to interpretation. When we receive a message, we often lack the cues humans have evolved to read...tone, expression, gesture...which contain critical information for interpreting meaning. Subconsciously, we fill in the gaps. But frequencly, our assumptions are wrong, which leads to all sorts of misunderstandings.
We have solved one dimension: transmission. Yet we are still far from understanding one another. We can share information but not always meaning. The next frontier in communication isn’t faster delivery - it’s interpretation.
How can we form a richer picture of a message? What additional information could be transmitted? How might we innovate on our primary medium - language - to better suit the tools we use to communicate? Can in person interaction be perfectly replicated or even surpassed?
On the other hand, what would a world of zero errors in interpretation look like? When do misunderstandings serve us, when are they most harmful - and to who?