Would it be inherently evil if there were not 6,000 spoken languages but one?
posted by Gyan on Oct 29, 2009 - 148 comments

Google began inviting volunteers to a public preview test of their new Wave web-based collaborative email and document communications platform yesterday, which enables users to "communicate and work together in real time." Initial reviews this past May seemed positive. (Previously) [more inside]
posted by zarq on Oct 1, 2009 - 75 comments

Seeking - How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting.
posted by nickyskye on Sep 6, 2009 - 40 comments

Shoot It! Create and mail a real [paper!] postcard from anywhere and to anyone around the world.
posted by ColdChef on Aug 12, 2009 - 34 comments

Recently, there have been a host of websites that delight in exposing the inanity and stupidity of our society. There is the granddaddy, Overheard in New York, which recounts silly conversations heard in the Big Apple, as well as a host of similar sites. There are now a variety of such websites, dedicated to different aspects of our society. [more inside]
posted by reenum on Jul 28, 2009 - 51 comments

Why do we have to live with divides between different types of communication? Introducing Google Wave. [more inside]
posted by CunningLinguist on May 28, 2009 - 139 comments

"Web professionals are often expected to be “always on”—always working, absorbing information, and honing new skills. Unless our work and personal lives are carefully balanced, however, the physical and mental effects of an "always on" life can be debilitating." Burnout: Running On Empty [more inside]
posted by netbros on May 27, 2009 - 56 comments

Can social networking be used to effect positive social change? Ushahidi (meaning "testimony" in Swahili) is one such project that harnesses mobile technology to empower local citizens to report on crucial and crisis situations in their area. [more inside]
posted by divabat on Nov 28, 2008 - 19 comments

70,000 BC: The Earliest Known Examples of Paleolithic Art
668 BC: Ashurbanipal Attempts to Collect all Knowledge
150 BC: Earliest Analog Computer
593 AD: First Mention of Printing in China
1454 AD: The Gutenberg Bible
1964 AD: Creation of ARPANET
From Cave Paintings to the Internet, a timeline of the history of information technology. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Oct 30, 2008 - 10 comments

Fivedollarcomparison.org is a collaborative photo project designed by a number of Nokia researchers to understand the buying power of 5 dollars across the world. The goal of this project is vague: to understand how culture, context and communication might change the world. Post your own example here. Sample photo.
posted by |n$eCur3 on Jul 22, 2008 - 19 comments

Kiki and Bubu! Austrian art collective monochrom presents the adventures of two sock puppets. Part One: Kiki and Bubu and The Shift. "Bubu wants to know why his dad is busy all the time. And Kiki explains him why... because of the neoliberal shift." Part Two: Kiki and Bubu and The Privilege. "Bubu ran into a bunch of liberals and they gave him a book. They said if he doesn't read it, they're going to beat him up. But Bubu can't read! And so Kiki helps..." [Via BB]
posted by homunculus on Jun 7, 2008 - 6 comments

Facial Expression Simulator Apparently it's useful for helping autistics learn facial expressions, among other things. Related.
posted by shivohum on Apr 1, 2008 - 33 comments

Dolphin rescues beached whales [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Mar 16, 2008 - 32 comments

The History of Visual Communication
posted by Wolfdog on Jan 29, 2008 - 11 comments

The site must be marked: What is here is dangerous(?) and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger...This place is best shunned and left uninhabited. [more inside]
posted by never used baby shoes on Jan 3, 2008 - 79 comments

How to talk to a friend with cancer, Time interview. Author of the excellent, Help Me Live: 20 Things People With Cancer Want You to Know [now a free, readable online Google book], Lori Hope, also lectures on compassionate communication and blogs for the practical and supportive CarePages.com, "free, personal websites that connect family and friends during illness and injury. Top 10 Dos and Don'ts.
posted by nickyskye on Dec 16, 2007 - 34 comments

I appreciate you for reading this article. I resent you for snarking in the thread without reading it.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Sep 5, 2007 - 293 comments

Zoomusicology , a subfield of Zoosemiotics.
posted by Miko on Aug 22, 2007 - 23 comments

"Thanks to tremendous progress achieved by the General Packet Radio System (GPRS), the wireless communication protocol, it is now possible for Africans to send articles and images (still and moving) about events taking place in their countries without using a computer and without having internet connection. Under those circumstances, the bigger the number of people expressing their opinions through that technology, the stronger becomes democracy, and the more valuable is the contribution to good governance efforts in Africa" - Voices of Africa, Mobile stories and videos from Africa. Quote above from article Mobile Reporters in Africa.
posted by infini on Jul 27, 2007 - 11 comments

Before the iPhone there were devices known as telephones.
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Jun 29, 2007 - 60 comments

A communication primer. A pretty basic, but well-written primer on effective communication, and proper understanding of the communication process, barriers, listening, feedback and non-verbal hints. Don Clark's site contains a lot of well-formed ideas on leadership and human performance without resorting to mumbo-jumbo and buzzwords. Not your typical MBA / self-help bs.
posted by psmealey on Apr 26, 2007 - 9 comments

Belief and knowledge - a primer on science communication
posted by Gyan on Feb 26, 2007 - 43 comments

When will Indians and Pakistanis release such a video on YouTube?
posted by infini on Feb 25, 2007 - 22 comments

Is the 21st century making you miserable? This young fellow may know why. Is he right, folks?
posted by wallstreet1929 on Feb 9, 2007 - 51 comments

An autistic woman "speaks" her language, then ours. (YouTube) "My language is not about designing words or even visual symbols for people to interpret. It is about being in a constant conversation with every aspect of my environment, reacting physically to all parts of my surroundings." [more inside]
posted by maudlin on Jan 25, 2007 - 170 comments

DEAF...i'm deaf, by kunosher, and just one of a growing group of videos on youtube created by the signing deaf. Many more here--from the personal to the political to videoblogs to deaf poetry jams to the news .
posted by amberglow on Dec 20, 2006 - 29 comments

Distance Learning by Eric Morin. Background on the short film. (QT instead of IFilm)
posted by MarkO on Sep 14, 2006 - 3 comments

My post-mortem to-do checklist, so far: 1. Study marine biology. 2. Accessorize my hot, wealthy widow. 3. Relay a few spooky telegrams to my spooky new friends. 4. Try to look as suspicious as possible. And that's even before rigor mortis sets in!
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Aug 8, 2006 - 37 comments

Oceangram is billed as an "online message in a bottle website." Send an anonymous message and it floats to another user in the world. They will add to it and it floats to another and so on. You'll get a bottle sent to you and you can add to it. [mi]
posted by daninnj on Aug 5, 2006 - 11 comments

If you watch enough television, you may have noticed that nobody says good-bye on the telephone. A little google action finds that some are worried that it may be a natural sociological progression. Or maybe it only happens on TV and with annoying telemarketers?
posted by Ekim Neems on Jun 12, 2006 - 104 comments

"... we are sweeping everything under the carpet, but the oddness is cropping up all over the place. And then, the carpet starts to move…".
Michael Haneke, "le manipulateur" who introduced his latest film, Caché, at Cannes with a half-amused “I wish you a disturbing evening”, is the proponent of a "cinema of disturbance". A cinema of loving self-mutilation, where time is non-linear and everything happens in long take shots; in Haneke's world, guilt destroys lives decades after the original sin. All his male characters are "Georges" and his female characters are either "Evas" or "Annas", "because I lack fantasy". Unsurprisingly, he is a Bresson and Tarkovsky fan. He'll direct "Don Giovanni" at the Paris Opera in early 2006: "In 20 years of working in the theater, I only staged one comedy, and that was my single failure".
posted by matteo on Nov 18, 2005 - 19 comments

Forbes special report on communication. A truckload of excellent articles and interview excerpts! Noam Chomsky on the spontaneous invention of language. Carl Zimmer on talking chimps. Jane Goodall on why words hurt. Arthur C. Clarke on the planetary conversation. Kurt Vonnegut on telling a story. Desmond Morris on symbolic gestures. Sid Meier on communicating with video games. David Copperfield on keeping secrets. Stan Lee on the superpower of comics. Steven Pinker on why we have language. Walter Cronkite on the language of news. Daniel Libeskind on the language of design. And much more!
posted by painquale on Nov 2, 2005 - 14 comments

Lisa Randall's Theory of Communication about Science
posted by Gyan on Sep 19, 2005 - 27 comments

The Medium is the Massage [mp3s]. Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian Professor of English Literature who coined phrases such as "the medium is the message" and global village in the 1960s, and who talked about coming global connectivity, saw media such as the printing-press and television as changing not only the information we received, but the ways in which we understand information and the world. His publishing style often involved the collection and juxtaposition of quotations and observations in a ways that were fast and cut-up, including collage and typographic experiment, and a sound collage lp released in 1967 which sounds as if it was recorded today.
posted by carter on Apr 26, 2005 - 13 comments

The radio revolution is the single greatest communications policy issue of the coming decade, and perhaps the coming century. The economics of entire industries could be transformed. Every significant public policy challenge could be implicated: competition; innovation; investment; diversity of programming; job creation; equality of access; coverage for rural and underserved areas; and promotion of education, health care, local communities, public safety, and national security. Yet the benefits of the paradigm shift are not guaranteed. Exploiting the radio revolution will require creativity and risk-taking by both the private and public sectors. At every step, there will be choices between preserving the status quo and unleashing the forces of change. The right answers will seem obvious only in hindsight.
posted by halekon on Feb 21, 2005 - 4 comments

Once the stuff of academic and corporate experimentation, ubiquitous computation (or "ubicomp") is gearing up for its commercial debut in the very near future. Along the lines of ostensibly "nanotechnological" pants, the reality of ubicomp as made manifest in consumer products may fall somewhat short of the prognostications: buying a personal communicator designed to work seamlessly within a ubicomp context is not the same thing as living in and with a truly pervasive network.

But already there are signs that the ubiquitous visions beloved by the corporate players and enshrined in their hype are coming into being. So which do you think it'll be? Guardian angel or inescapable, panoptical prison? Neither? Maybe both? I have a sinking feeling we're going to find out, one way or another.
posted by adamgreenfield on Sep 24, 2004 - 8 comments

Koko goes to the dentist
About a month ago, Koko, a 300-plus-pound ape who became famous for mastering more than 1,000 signs, began telling her handlers... she was in pain. They quickly constructed a pain chart, offering Koko a scale from one to 10. When Koko started pointing to nine or 10 too often, a dental appointment was made. (There's a rather funny development at the very bottom of the story)
posted by moonbird on Aug 9, 2004 - 35 comments

The Rejection Hotline is a number you can give out to somebody who asks for your phone number if you just don't want to give out your real number. Located in over 30 cities nationwide, and with people having cell phone numbers from all over the place, you never have to deal with telling someone no again. Get your number before you head out tonight.
posted by thebwit on May 22, 2004 - 21 comments

Reflections On Our Media of Communication. Traditional news media vs. the internet. Are people really abandoning TV, paper, and radio news? Does the 'net really offer the best in free-press? The ever lovable Fred thinks so, and he's not afraid to tell you why.
posted by eas98 on Apr 22, 2004 - 14 comments

The Drama Triangle Here's an example. Dad comes home from work to find mom coming down hard on Junior with, "Clean up your room or else" threats. He immediately comes to the rescue,"Mom" he might say,"give the boy a break". Any one of several possibilities might occur next. Perhaps Mom, feeling victimized by dad, turns on him, automatically moving him into a victim position. They might do a few quick trips around the triangle with Junior on the sidelines. Or maybe Junior joins dad in a persecutory "Let's gang up on mom" approach, and they could play it from that angle. Or Junior could turn-coat on dad, rescuing mom, with; "Mind your own business, dad . . . I don't need your help!" So it goes, with endless variations perhaps, but nonetheless, round and round the triangle. For many families, it's the only way they know how to communicate.
posted by SpaceCadet on Apr 4, 2004 - 11 comments

The Old Telephone Company, Essex, England
posted by hama7 on Mar 12, 2004 - 7 comments

BullFighter is shareware that flags corporate jargon, like "mission critical asset foregrounding" and "value-added paradigm shift," in Word documents. Who developed it? Deloitte Consulting. Will wonders (or gimmicks) never cease?
posted by serafinapekkala on Aug 4, 2003 - 13 comments

The Public Conversations Project "promotes constructive conversations and relationships among people who have differing values, world views, and perspectives about divisive public issues." They offer guidelines in discussing issues with your community and family as well as a resource in creating dialogue about Iraq. When I find myself reduced to name calling, I need these sort of communication tools.
posted by ericrolph on Apr 4, 2003 - 0 comments

The Bacteria Whisperer
“Bonnie Bassler discovered a secret about microbes that the science world has missed for centuries. The bugs are talking to each other. And plotting against us.”
posted by o2b on Mar 21, 2003 - 13 comments

Vibrating cellphones of love! "Within a year you could be able to "touch" someone over your mobile phone", says the BBC. Some people have been waiting for this for quite a while - and dreaming up VERY specific applications.
posted by theplayethic on Jan 21, 2003 - 8 comments

Did You Catch That? Linguistics expert Deborah Tannen looks at perceptions and realities surrounding the speed at which we intercommunicate (washingtonpost.com).
posted by LinusMines on Jan 5, 2003 - 23 comments

Bar Signs. Modern Drunkard has posted a handy guide for the alcoholic in us all, a set of gestures to communicate your needs when it's too loud to hear, or just because, as the site says, "when words come out, whiskey can't get in."
posted by jonson on Dec 16, 2002 - 21 comments

"If you like surfing the web, it is probably because you believe people are basically good." That's the Economist interpreting the results of a recent study by IBM researchers of how cultural characteristics apparently affect people's readiness to adopt new communications technologies.
posted by mattpfeff on Oct 8, 2002 - 19 comments

An interesting idea Create your own bot... Sounds like an interesting service. What do you think?
posted by TNLNYC on Jul 17, 2002 - 2 comments

"Enough with the petting, I'm trying to lick myself here."
Introducing the Bowlingual, the doggie emotion translator. As if dogs are coy and hard to figure out. It just became Friday in Japan.
posted by planetkyoto on May 9, 2002 - 7 comments