Beautiful Signals: August 2010

Friday, August 27, 2010

Post-Social-Conversation: The End of Social Media

The End of Conversation, an Audioblog on the Post-Social-Media World. Signal & Noise, Human Information Behavior. Information noise, Information Filtering. Signal-to-Noise Ratio.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Golden Radio: The Beautiful Signal God

I once liked to think of irrelevant, uninteresting or unwanted information as "noise" in language media / communications media.. But then people started using the term signal-to-noise ratio and I thought the analogy was taken too far. Really if it is information that is impertinent, just call it impertinent. If it has to do with the level of background noise, say level of background noise. I don't like it when metaphors or analogies are used merely to save time. Like instead of explaining the intricacies of the Trinitarian concept of God in Catholic doctrine, you use an analogy like a three-leaved clover.. it can be pretty even cute, but I find such time-saving shortcut metaphors to be awfully "noisy" themselves.. So I try to ignore it.. and when I'm not listening,I fall into silent contemplation again..

See Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_to_noise_ratio

"Signal-to-noise ratio (often abbreviated SNR or S/N) is a measure used in science and engineering to quantify how much a signal has been corrupted by noise. It is defined as the ratio of signal power to the noise power corrupting the signal. A ratio higher than 1:1 indicates more signal than noise. While SNR is commonly quoted for electrical signals, it can be applied to any form of signal (such as isotope levels in an ice core or biochemical signaling between cells).
In less technical terms, signal-to-noise ratio compares the level of a desired signal (such as music) to the level of background noise. The higher the ratio, the less obtrusive the background noise is.
"Signal-to-noise ratio" is sometimes used informally to refer to the ratio of useful information to false or irrelevant data in a conversation or exchange. For example, in online discussion forums and other online communities, off-topic posts and spam are regarded as "noise" that interferes with the "signal" of appropriate discussion." http://chum.ly/n/286a7f

A New Signal

I've been thinking about signals a lot and for a very long time. I've been obsessed with signals since I started playing the electric guitar about twenty years ago. I eventually studied sound design and my love of signals has only grow with time.

So naturally I met the new discourse around signals & noise in information technologies with eagerness and an open heart. Many of us have been following Social Streams now for quite some time, and the discussion over the signal-to-noise ratio is currently raging strong.

I began thinking about an hour or so ago about different signal types. When I record audio signals, whether it's my voice or my electric guitar, I work with analog signals usually streaming through electronics equipment which I then digitize, ending up with digital signals.

What we are calling Signals in computer-mediated communication is closer to the definition of "market signals", which are a form of Information. At any rate, I've been thinking of these information streams and trying to think of what the next type of signal might be.

Let's face it, we're mostly dealing with a stream of information, mostly in the form of links to media or links to profiles, blogs, various other kinds of dynamic websites, etc. A lot of the time, too, on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, we're still seeing a stream of Status Updates.

Between a stream of equal part links and status updates, I wonder about what new kinds of streaming information might occur in the near future. We have people following the stock market and the kinds of information found therein. A lot of what is streaming we could just call News. Some of it is personal information, information about various "states of affairs".

So I have to ask you, what new kind of signals do you think might appear in the near future? Maybe machine-to-machine signals in the form of what is called electronic negotiation? In other words, your washing machine might negotiate with energy sources to optimize the electrical signal being used by the machine, or the other appliances in the house, negotiating with the price of sources per kilowatt-milliseconds.

What do you think? What new types of signals might we see streaming in the near future?