communications

Universal Communication & Augmented Reality

Knowledge can be basically summarized as people’s acquaintances with facts and principles as well their experiences, familiarity or conversance with the world they interact in, and therefore is an adaptive attribute that stays with the person. Context on the other hand is a time-based proximity of knowledge that is shared by people and places within a certain zone at different instances in time. Thus it is a set of fixed conditions that a person may be fitted into.

In an act of communication, the person communicating is always expressing his or her ideas against a certain context. Because the communicator will at any given time be present at a location or dimension with a set of fixed local attributes as well as shared knowledge with the person being communicated to. For example, the communicator may be talking to a person or giving a speech to a group of people. But where ever he/she is situated, his/her knowledge has been fitted into an unchangeable set of pooled knowledge, since all the audiences that are receiving such communication should share some associating attributes to be in the same place to begin with, making up that certain “context”, be it in a city, a building or even a website. If they chose to be communicated to in the same way, and appear in one location at the same time then they are grouped as an instance of a context and thus also sharing some relevant attributes of associations with the communicator. However, the outcome of communication is always in a form of associative meanings, translations or connotations. Thus, when delivered in a wrong or inefficient ways, a lost in translation may occur and mislead the “new knowledge”.

The process of communication begins with an “aim”, which is the tools of expression and comes in an intuitive form; by using our senses to communicate an idea verbally, visually, or by touch and gestures. Thus, it is obvious that aim is a form dealing with human senses, so to communicate universally the most flexible and less invasive form would be by human perception, while others such as hearing, touch and smell and taste has limits based on personal health as well as body experiences. Therefore, a predominant form of perception affects the essential outcomes of the delivery as well as associations involved when trying to establish a platform to communicate universally.

Moreover, the act of associating is a process that combines contextual learning and adding a self definition to the very same content by relating it to past experiences and conversance; hence the concept of the signifier and the signified.

With all the basic components of communication explained, there should be noticeable patterns between each of these components. For example, knowledge and aim are both adaptive traits that varies with personal experiences and are thus considered unique, while context and association are generalized knowledge shared by many, since association is more of a portal or a tool for the conversion that occurs between knowledge and context, much like a calculator and it depends on how the user engages it. Personally, I think that the end translation is very important in communication, but it is not nearly as important as the interaction and the ability for both communicators to associate their knowledge and make relevant connections. Thus, the main design opportunity for universal communication lies not only in the translation of knowledge v.s context and vice versa but ways and platforms of association to derive at a “new knowledge”.

Possibilities of such design should involve a platform of visual input and associations accessible to both parties in the communication process as way of expression and agreement. The information can then go through a converter or a “conversation assistant” which is a localized database accessible by region that helps compare, recognize and analyze the communication and deliver it with generalized visuals such as language, symbols and could even be assisted by sound clips, chosen as a feedback by the communicator to then be displayed to the other party to assume a complete person-to-person scenario in communication. However this device should also allow for person-to-environment communication when no one else is conveniently accessible, and therefore has separate functions but based on the same principle. For example the device may then utilize the visual input component to capture something and then run through the local database with image recognition of the database to assist in way-finding or signage translation, similarly the environment may also be geo-tagged or radio tagged for this cause. The person should be also give the option to communicate back to the environment for example when looking for a specific service or place and be notified by colour codes. This concludes a “visual associateor” device that helps people communicate contextually and personally.