Friday, February 11, 2011

Advanced communication?


I’ve always taken for granted that humans probably have the most advanced communication in the universe. 
But I’ve realized how ego (species) centric this is. Quite apart from the likelihood of other races in this and other galaxies being far more advanced than ourselves in all ways (it’d be weird if they weren’t), we can even speculate that some animals may have communication we couldn’t understand even if we had a translator, because their minds and concepts and perception apparatus may be totally different. 
Hell, even plants or microorganisms may communicate on advanced levels. 
Or there may be minds in the hearts of suns or gas giants, or living in space between galaxies, or in spaces we don’t know about because human-visible light doesn’t show them. 
And of course, communication implies spiritual progress towards enlightening. 

(Thanks to Arthur C. Clarke for stories which inspire such thoughts.)

3 comments:

neeraj said...

How about dolphins?

According to research of John C. Lilly: http://67.55.50.201/lilly/cetacean.html

Anonymous said...

Gaia for a local reference. For another New Scientist recently published a story about trees of _different_ species communicating through their root zones in a biological internet kind of way.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Cool. Is this online?