How We Learned to See Language
Evolutionary theory, linguistics and information theory each illuminated different aspects of language without reducing it to one…
Protocols
Programming Can Start With a Communication System
If programming begins as syntax memorization, the relationships inside a system can arrive late. A tiny communication system introduces useful questions immediately: who asks, who answers, and what happens when no answer arrives?
Where the nervous system of civilization Analogy Breaks
A network can deliver a message without guaranteeing truth, understanding or social benefit. Transport success and semantic success are separate…
The Philosophical Problem Hidden Inside Communication Technology
Communication technology externalizes part of humanity's coordination machinery and changes the effective distance between…
Language Through a Systems Architect's Eyes
Protocol thinking clarifies syntax, encoding, convention and error handling, and it shows why successful communication requires some shared…
What Communication Technology Really Is
Communication systems combine encoding, transmission, addressing, routing, synchronization, error handling and social convention. New media change not only speed but which relationships and institutions become…
What Language Really Is
Human language combines sound or gesture, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, memory, social inference and cultural learning. Meaning depends on shared contexts as well as formal…
Where the protocol Analogy Breaks
Network protocols try to minimize ambiguity. Human language routinely exploits ambiguity, metaphor, implication and incomplete information because speakers infer one another's…
The Philosophical Problem Hidden Inside Language
Language lets humans externalize models of absent worlds: memories, plans, laws, mathematics and imaginary…
A Reticulum Interface Is Not the Same Thing as the Internet
One of Reticulum's interesting properties is that communication does not have to be tied to a single medium. But adding an interface does not automatically give every application a conventional Internet connection.
LoRa Radio and the LoRaWAN Network Are Different Layers
The name LoRa is often used as if it describes an entire network. But the way information is represented over the radio and the rules for operating a multi-device network are different layers. LoRa and LoRaWAN are a useful example of that boundary.
Communication Technology Through a Systems Architect's Eyes
For a telephony and network engineer, protocols show civilization as negotiated interoperability: independent systems agree on enough structure to create temporary paths between…
How We Learned to See Communication Technology
Telegraphy, telephony, packet networking and mobile systems repeatedly converted physical signals into shared abstractions that could scale beyond one device or…