Wednesday April 3, 2024; 9:00 PM EDT
- Thought experiment. Which is better, semaphore or RSS? Yes, the question is a bit tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely.#
- Both semaphore and RSS send messages quickly along networks that have been built to purpose.#
- An aside: My students and I sent a simple message across a large university campus once. Let me say that semaphore, done right, is fast. Our message took less than five seconds to arrive.#
- Both semaphore and RSS can presumably send any message you want to send.#
- Both semaphore and RSS require someone who knows how to send a message on the particular system.#
- Both semaphore and RSS require someone at the other end who knows how to read a message on the particular system.#
- If you send a message saying that an army is crossing the border and heading in the direction of the capital city, both semaphore and RSS require the person who receives the message to know who to turn to. There needs to be an elaborated civil institution in place for responding to a crisis. Without an elaborated institution in place, the person who reads the message can perk up and say, "Wow!" but the value of the information pretty much dies there.#
- As a message system without an elaborated social structure to pick up the message, reflect on it, act on it as a group, both RSS and semaphore resemble a personal phone call. "Hey, Jane, there's an army crossing the border here. Thought you'd want to know." "Thanks, Bill." The message bounces around briefly in the head space of one or two people's private lives. The social value of the information -- potential value -- lapses, no matter how fast the message has come down through the system. #
- For semaphore and RSS, the value of information grows proportionately to the size of the elaborated network of organized people a message happens to arrive at.#
- "There's a mob forming outside the U.S. Capital!" Wow.#
- "There's people with long rifles hanging out at the Michigan Statehouse." You don't say?#
- "Your fellow citizens are tempted to let themselves fall into indifference or despair!" Wouldn't surprise me.#
- But if these or other important messages arrive by semaphore at the inbox of an elaborated social network organized to ponder and respond, it might be a different story. But people would have to be trained to do more than send or receive a message on the system. #
- First, for one thing, they'd have to figure out what that "more" entails.#
- Still, semaphore rocks. We sent that message out the south-facing door of that classroom and it made its way back, the long way around a part of the campus and back in through the north window, in just under five seconds. Modern message systems are beasts.#