The Missing Links of Communication
Posted: June 17, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 13 Comments »When my elder daughter (Aarushi) was growing up, an interesting thing happened that I can never forget. She started reading. It wasn’t the reading itself that was so interesting. It was her excitement at the ability to read that made me take notice. After she learnt to read, wherever we went, be it a restaurant or a shop, she would try to read everything and feel extremely excited about it. Her reaction was of a person whose spectrum of visible things suddenly increased many-folds. She could suddenly know the world around her so much better; she could connect with it better; she could be more than she was.
What really changed with her ability to read? A new communication link got established between her & her environment. Through that link, she could absorb her environment so much better.
And recently, I had some interesting experience which made me reflect on this matter a bit more. For an upcoming project, I was designing the website. And this time around, I decided to approach it as “a designer”. So, I started studying typography, colors and other elements of visual design. And suddenly, I experienced the same excitement that Aarushi had experienced when she learnt to read. I could now read “colors” and “types” in my environment. A new communication link got established.
What do I mean? Let me explain further. For designing the new website, I had to design a color palette whose colors will be used in the website. Now, in order to do that, I studied the technicalities about colors. Something like:
- The technicalities: What are hue, saturation and value? What are shades & tints? What are additive & subtractive colors?
- The emotional aspects: What moods are created by different colors? What emotional response different colors create in people?
- Getting control: How colors influence people’s experience of a website?
I spent about a day or two on this and the learning I got was very valuable. Suddenly, I found that my surroundings were all the time “communicating” with me in the “language of colors”. But it was my lack of knowledge because of which I could never “read” that “communication”. Now, suddenly, everywhere I see, I find a communication encoded in the colors. From my furniture & walls to various shades of green in my balcony plants to grays & blues in the sky to the browns of earth and tree trunks. I can now “read” colors. Not very proficient yet but a world has suddenly opened up.
And this whole experience got me thinking. Is it only about colors? What are the other “mediums” that my environment uses for communication but I have not been trained to understand those mediums very well? What about body language? What about language of the eyes? What about the language of how people walk? What about the language of tonality? What about the language of proportions? What about “Hand-writing”?
There is so much “communication” hidden from me just because I do not know how to read it.
That is awareness
Art is long, life is short!
CodingHorror talks about the joy when a child first learns to speak:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/06/how-to-talk-to-human-beings.html
While I do not remember back to my first speaking age, I do remember when I could start really reading stuff that adults could. It was a huge joy to be able to read the same newspaper that my parents did and to able to read names of shops.
@Atul, yes, it is awareness. But I didn’t mean it in the spiritual sense (i.e. thoughtless awareness). I meant it more in terms of thoughtful awareness itself. During communication, we focus too much on the dimension of “words”. There is constant communication even along other dimensions like “mood”, “intensity” etc that we never focus on. It works at the subconscious level but it would be nicer if I could read/hear it as much as I do with words.
@Ganesh, I didn’t get it
@Ashwin, that’s precisely what I was referring to. IMO, when you are able to read the names of the shops, you suddenly feel more a part of the world; you feel better connected; you feel that the world has opened up a bit more to you.
@manas, I used do what you just did. Learn the internals before you start familiarizing something new in life. Example, I used to read how the bike functions before I actually rode one. And also reading how “MONEY” works before actually taking a loan! But that is not possible for all the stuff, like the ones you mentioned in you last but one paragraph. Because “art is long, and life is short”, in short, I dont have time for this.
@Ganesh, I agree that it’s not practical to learn everything. At the same time, we do learn many many things during our academic years. And what I feel is that some of the things that are most important in life (how to get along with people, how to understand your environment etc) are missing.
If I go back to colors, look at it this way: colors are so pervasive and they affect us all the time. Yet we do not understand them. On the other hand, mutual funds are not.
Manas, first of all a good article. I looked at this from dimension other than “communication”. I guess what is at play here is “childlike inquisitiveness” meeting with “childlike joy”. Can you recollect, after Aarushi learnt reading, when was next she has such joy? In childlike state, one think oneself as a beginner, one is not shy of trying, one is unconcerned if a fellow next to one know it or not, one is not ashamed of failure, when one is not doing something to pass exam, to make parents happy, to score point over colleague, win a project etc etc. This is what I meant with unconditional.
If i retain this childlike inquisitiveness, then regardless of the field, I can experience joy lifelong in the same domain. I am sure the moment you start thinking yourself well versed with “language of colors”, they may cease to be that great source of joy. In a deeper sense, it is not the communication as a process, but the “essence” and feeling of joy coming out of seeing sense in that. So, almost everything in nature makes some sense, but we are limited in our capabilities.
You brought the topic of money. It does communicate. It stands for many things for many. Guy running mutual fund sees this as “raw material”, an investor sees it as “fungible asset”, an economist sees this as “fiat money” which reflect collective purchasing power of an economy. And just to press, ” most of us do not understand money”, regardless of whether we have it or not. E.g If I am in a country and I see people are carrying lots of money with them, people in general carry large denominations of notes, or place where people carry lots in plastic form, or people mostly carry small denominations, or I see large/small prices, when on roadside I see bank’s interest rates in ads – this all communicates thousand things to me and I can keep looking at this around me and understand about the place more quickly. This is language of money just beginning.
To close the end, since money came in this thread, you must be knowing that “RBI” is like any other bank in some ways, so it does have its balance sheet and Profit & Loss statements. Do you know how India looks at “RBI’s profit or Loss”? What do you think, will RBI Gov get bonus when RBI makes profit or loose the job when RBI makes loss? Just think and I promise if you approach this like a child, you will see that “money does communicate”.
@HariOm, this was very thoughtful and insightful I would say. While “joy” was not the theme of my writing but your perspective is interesting. And of course, I agree with you on that.
Do you remember one of our discussion about happiness in Motorola days? And I was saying that one could be happy all the time. And it’s not the exuberance or constant laughing. Just the way a wood simmers, slowly and constantly, one can have that internal feeling of happiness all the time.
If I take a step back, what you are saying about “joy” is very similar to that. The “joy” is not about learning. It’s just there in all the children regardless of what they are doing. And beyond this, I’ll get into the language of spiritualism, so, let me restraint myself
And about the money, I again agree with you. In fact, I have been reflecting further on this topic after I wrote it and I found so many things around me that I can call the “links of communication”. E.g. the way a person arranges the desk to the way people drive. I am sure even the way people age communicates a lot about the kind of life they have had.
Interesting reading Manas. Photography is also a means for you to connect at both macro- and microscopic level with the surroundings. The ability of seeing and then capturing what you saw to let others see through your eyes would only be feasible with photography or videography. Fortunately such technology is so affordable now. Then how do we learn to hear?
Hi Cuong,
Good to see you here
By talking about Photography in the same breadth, the discussion goes to another level. Now, you are not only talking about “the communication you have received from your surroundings” but also about “how you capture your interpretation of that communication”.
Interesting.
Thanks for the deep thought provoking article. Paradigms of communication are perhaps the most intricate mysteries of human nature. I wonder how beauty is interpreted in different cultures and societies, though at a very tangible level it is just a combination of some shape, form and color. But is it really so straight forward to lay out some universal rules by rationalizing the biological process of interpreting and assimilating information which forms the perception of beauty, or it should just remain in the eyes of the beholder outside the rigors of rational analysis.
I am not sure if I shall be any better in appreciating the beauty of a sunrise from a snow top mountain if I understand intricacies of shape, form and color in visual communication and how they translate into my perceptions of beauty. Nevertheless It important to understand the dimensions of visual communication to replicate beauty in our creations but not necessarily required to appreciate the beauty of a creation.
Perhaps we are gifted with the innate ability to assimilate enormous amount of information and make sense out of it without even involving out conscious mind, and if we don’t get a chance to understand the inner working of the process behind it we are not necessarily loosing out the show
@Suryya,
It was a very thought-provoking comment. You have a gift for writing and I think you should write more. And if you do, please share the link
I mostly agree with you that we don’t need to learn the mechanics just to appreciate the beauty. I have been listening to Indian Classical music for a while and I can’t tell one piece from another. Yet, I enjoy every bit of it and I am not sure how much fun am I missing out by not knowing what Raga it is and what makes it special.
At the same time, appreciating beauty is only one aspect of living in any environment. In my experience, there are a couple of other things for which it definitely helps to know the basics. One of them is Creation as you mentioned in your comment. While one can create a good design with a sub-conscious level understanding (and I have seen such gifted people) but for the majority of mediocres like me, a conscious effort is what makes it happen. At times it’s my own creation and at times, it’s collaborating with others. Knowing the language definitely helps.
There is one more area which has always concerned me. The people who know the language tend to wield some kind of power over those who don’t. A programmer wields power over a pointy haired manager. A designer wields power over a product manager. And above all, the advertisers wield power over common-man. The people who design product labels and the billboards and those fancy websites know many many ways to communicate with people. This gives them enormous power over these people. They can make people do things that those people wouldn’t have done otherwise.
You might find yourself buying a deo, or filling up a form on a website, or filling your shopping kart with items that you didn’t come for. Why is it that? Because someone who understood these links of communication leveraged them.
And I think the biggest advantage of becoming aware of the internals of communication is to regain the power over yourself. When I am moved by ad of a jeans, I know what has moved me. I can choose not to be moved.
And of course, it does help to wield this power once in a while over others
Very good!!
Always something to learn!!