Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Language Acquisition - Part 7: Possible Applications For The Investigation

Language is the way of communication, so studies in the field of language can be very useful in the field of communications, especially the protocol part of communication. Protocol encryption is very similar to communicating through a foreign language, and protocol decryption is very similar to the process of acquiring language. Someone who is working to decrypt a message, is like a baby trying to understand what his parents are talking about. Currently humans are communicating with their direct environment, the earth. If human ever reach inter-galactic space, they would need advanced techniques for protocol decryption in order to communicate with alien species -if they existed-. So "practicing" communication with alien species by trying to communicate with animals is a good exercise, I hope research would come up with good results in this regard.

As a practical side to a 7-parts article, here is a list of four possible applications for this proposed investigation:
  1. Revolutionized encryption: Deep structure hypothesis suggests that all human languages have common trends. In message decryption routines, statistical analysis is used to find patterns in streams of data. With enough information and processing, messages in any language and with a wide-range of encryption methods can be decoded using computer programs. In order to make even harder encryption techniques we need more knowledge in coding schemes. New ways of language would mean one such revolution.
  2. In order to discover new ways of language, we can investigate the languages of non-humans. This has the double effect of better understanding of coding techniques and leading to better encryption, and better methods to decrypt foreign messages.
  3. Maybe, and only maybe, aliens are already sending out messages in their own views of language in the universe. If we can identify such foreign messages, they might help us locate alien species.
  4. Implementing Artificial Intelligence that has language recognition capability. If a machine can learn human language just like human babies can learn their parents' language, this would be a revolution in the AI field.
  5. Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP): Some researches claimed positive clues to the existence of ESP in the human brain. Some tests show that some people have been able to use "Telepathy". If humans had such capabilities then it is their lack of understanding of communication are unable to unlock these parts of the brain. Better understanding of language may help humans unlock ESP - if it existed.

In this series:
Language Acquisition - Part 1: General Discussion
Language Acquisition - Part 2: The Influence Of Physiological Formation
Language Acquisition - Part 3: Deep Structure Hypothesis
Language Acquisition - Part 4: Ambiguities
Language Acquisition - Part 5: The Problem Of Representation
Language Acquisition - Part 6: Linguistic Determinism Hypothesis
Language Acquisition - Part 7: Possible Applications For The Investigation

3 comments:

The Observer said...

I want to unlock my ESP :P.

Actually this is a very interesting read. The whole language series is excellent.

Good job.

Devil's Mind said...

Although I am not a big fan of Telepathy, but I think that it can be scientifically possible.

The brain is a very complicated device with electrical current passing through its nerves. Since electricity can be found in the brain, it can theoretically send and receive electromagnetic waves, and hence can work as a radio sender and\or receiver.

The radio is a really simple device, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that our brains have some kind of radio inside.

The only problem is, how do we tune such device if it existed. Every station has a frequency for transmission. If thats the case for humans, how do we know what frequency should we be looking for!!

The Observer said...

I guess it would be a nice experience to try it. Once we do, we can decide how good it can be!