And if our future
Lies on the final line
Are we brave enough
To see the signals and the signs?
--
I Wonder What Would Happen to this WorldHarry Chapin
Physically, we transmit signals or signs -- audible, visual, tactual. But the mere transmission and reception of a physical signal does not constitute communication. A sign, if it is perceived by the recipient, has the potential for selecting responses in him. Physically, when we communicate, we make noises with our mouths, or gesticulate, or exhibit some token or icon, and these physical signals set up a response behavior.
Colin Cherry
Neither a wise man or a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
The theory of communication is partly concerned with the measurement of information content of signals, as their essential property in the establishment of communication links. But the information content of signals is not to be regarded as a commodity; it is more a property or potential of the signals, and as a concept it is closely related to the idea of selection, or discrimination. This mathematical theory first arose in telegraphy and telephony, being developed for the purpose of measuring the information content of telecommunication signals. It concerned only the signals themselves as transmitted along wires, or broadcast through the aether, and is quite abstracted from all questions of "meaning." Nor does it concern the importance, the value, or truth to any particular person. As a theory, it lies at the syntactic level of sign theory and is abstracted from the semantic and pragmatic levels. We shall argue ... that, though the theory does not directly involve biological elements, it is nevertheless quite basic to the study of human communication -- basic but insufficient.
Colin Cherry
Now Tom was - the hell with that, he said to himself. It is something that happens to everybody. I should know about that by now. It is the only thing that is really final, though.
How do you know that? he asked himself. Going away can be final. Walking out the door can be final. Any form of real betrayal can be final. Dishonesty can be final. Selling out is final. But you are just talking now. Death is what is really final.Ernest Hemingway
They have had numerous extraterrestrial signals. They were apparently searching in a spectrum or in an area . . . where they hit the mother lode. The signals were so numerous that they began to have their systems externally jammed by some sort of human agency that did not want them to continue receiving those signals... [I received this information from a source in SETI.] This person, if I were to say who he is, almost every one your listeners would probably know the name. (July 30, 2006)
Steven M. Greer
Chapin, Harry
Chaplin, Charlie (Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin)
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