Communications

Emergent Patterns

We mistake many other dynamic communication systems for objects all the time. We think of atoms and molecules and bacteria and cells and beings like you and I as objects, and not dynamic systems of intercommunications. 

The word Communication is derived from the Indo-European root com - together, and mei - to barter, exchange (also seen in immune). Communication means to make common, public, shared by all or many. 

In a broad sense, communications are an exchange of information, a relationship, an interaction between systems. 

Communications between systems are always directional (to or from or between the systems) and they always generate change.

When systems intercommunicate, new patterns emerge. The new patterns are more complex than the patterns of intercommunications creating them. 

Let's look at Moiré patterns as a good example of how new patterns emerge. Two patterns of lines overlaid one on top of the other and then moved slightly apart create brand new patterns

Intercommunications

Intercommunication is the exchange of  information between more than one being, or layer of being, creating mutual awareness. The mutual sharing of information, where both parties actively send and receive messages.

Unlike one-way communication, intercommunication stresses the back-and-forth nature of the interaction, where participants are both contributors and recipients. Used in the same way as when we say rooms intercommunicate, allowing information or people to move freely between them. 

Intercommunication implies Feedback. Cells intercommunicate with each other forming a common awareness of a whole being. Organisms intercommunicate with the environment creating a self-regulating ecosystem.

Energy intercommunicates between the sky and the sea in a waterspout.

Non-living objects communicate with forces, like electromagnetism, gravity, or direct impact. The resulting changes between non-living systems are limited to a specific set of forms and conditions. On the cosmic scale we see similar shapes - spheres and vortexes repeated billions upon billions of times. The up/down quarks and electron/electron neutrino leptons intercommunicate using bosons, photons and gluons (under natural conditions) in 118 different combinations (elements). Each element can intercommunicate with itself to become one of 32 crystal forms.

Atoms intercommunicate with different elements to form hundreds of thousands of different kinds of molecules. Yet these too are divided into specific sets by the limitations of how they can communicate with each other. Their arrangements for building larger networks of communications are limited to Plato's five regular convex solids (tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron) controlled by four kinds of pattern-shapes that generate all of the natural universe.

Living creatures communicate with an even greater range of interchanges; thousands of different chemical messengers, an infinite range of electrical impulses, microwaves, sounds, tactile stimuli, and visual signals. Some of these are accidental emissions detected by other organisms, others are deliberate signals. Communications construct the form and control the behavior of living beings.

Communications emitted by one being will regulate the behavior of other beings capable of detecting them. Communications are events between beings.

The Interplay of Open and Closed Communication Webs

There is a critical difference between language and content. Language is a semi-closed pattern of organization between beings. 

Content flows through the language system; an open flow extending between all concerned parties and their internal and external environments.

 Language moderates content to create an emergent higher layer of being, a new concept.

Bacteria have a large vocabulary, big enough to create some pretty amazing organizations (fish, trees, human beings and all the rest of the living creatures of our planet).

Cells also communicate. Their vocabulary is much more sophisticated than that of bacteria, but shares many similarities because cells are communication networks of bacteria and thus use many of the same communication systems.

How do living creatures appear in the vortex of the elements moving through them?

Atomic Communications