Emo Bit (TM) Theory

I don't really write all that much. So here goes nothing much.

I'm trying to remember what life was like before the Internet. Before Google. Before "social websites." Was it more meaningful than today? Was my attention span longer, was I less distracted? Were relationships deeper, social interactions better? How were memes and ideas spread?

Surely information is much more "decentralized" nowadays, and easier to find. I cannot imagine doing my line of work (R&D) without the power of Google search. But does it come at a price? Perhaps I am more prone to think less on my own, though I certainly don't think so. Perhaps, too, I lose a certain focus to the task at hand when I am presented with such a vast array of diverging information. "I digress" could well be a motto for this age.

Even as I write this, my mind is constantly wandering about. My fingers are itching every few minutes to open a browser -- and subsequently lose minutes, if not hours, of productivity to surf the web. No doubt the Internet has expanded the horizons of my knowledge and opened my mind to new ways of thinking and solving problems. But this ultimate tool is at the same time also the ultimate time suck.

What of the social aspects? Sure, there are more ways to communicate now than ever: e-mail, IM, skype, wikis, forums, social webs. But I feel that "more" is not inherently "better." There is still somehow that "disconnected" nature of expressing through a computer screen rather than to a live person. Though one could argue that a computer screen is just an analog for the ink & pen of old, I think that the act of writing on paper imprints more of one's humanity on it as compared to writing it on a screen. For one, it is in your own handwriting.

Let me give an example. Below is the same "message" recorded in different ways.

[I love you. in ASCII text]
[I love you. in hand-written script]
[I love you. in voice]

They all want to express the same thing. Which one is *least* convincing? Which one(s) is(are) likely to evoke a more emotional response?

Information theory tells us that all information (here: "I love you" plus all the other meaning that goes with it) can be represented as bits. So why is the ASCII-encoded "I love you" (10 x 8 bits) less evocative than the handwritten or voiced one? I would argue that the latter ones add additional "bits" of information to the message, emo bits (TM) if you will, imparted from the sender to the receiver. (Note that I'm not talking about the additional bits necessary to store the encoded image or voice information!) Or that conversely, if I choose to express "I love you" by typing it through a computer, I actually lose some bits of information as compared to if I write it or say it directly.

This brings us to an interesting point. If these bits can be quantified and measured, can they then be used to make computer communication more "human"?

Another example. Think of the computer-generated voice in your GPS navigation system ("Turn right after 100 meters"), or any other text-to-speech program for that matter. Why is this voice always so distinguishable from a normal, human voice? (Even one that is intentionally trying to disguise as a robot :P) There are a lot of nuances, randomness in the human voice that can be difficult to express by a machine. In fact, the whole idea of computing, of algorithms, is counter to the idea of nuance and randomness. After all, you would expect a computer to produce the same result each time it calculates something, otherwise what's the point? If it gives a different answer when the weather is sunny from the answer it gives when the weather is cloudy, I wouldn't rely on that computer to run my banking or nuclear reactor software. :D

Okay, I've had enough pseudo-intellectual-rambling-without-any-factual-basis for today. Your thoughts?