Future Commo

Communication With Our Future

By Roy D. Follendore III

When we see a sudden flash of lightening it can sometimes be hard to connect that event with the thunder that may come many seconds later. Within our minds the lightening exists as what it is. The thunder exists as something else. But in truth what these things are arise from the same instant and the same event and so we must deal with our perception.

Today we are living in an age where people are trying to provide "instant" communications. The fact is that it just isn't true. There is no such thing as an "instant" messaging service.

Consider the fact that humanity constantly lives in the past. Nothing reaches our brain that has not already happened. By the time that our brain senses what has happened we are actually within the future from any event. Our brain compensates for this cognitive delay by assuming that sensory information is always current and now rather than delayed and later.

When you consider this you can understand why communication is about sending messages into the future. Even as I type this page the delay between the moment between my thought and the reflex in my finger puts these words into the future. The delay between the moment that my finger presses a key and it appears on this screen is further into the future. The storage and transmission and the delivery of this communication from my mind to your mind are just more extensions from this moment to your moment.

I am sending you this message from the past to someone that may or may not exist. You are reading this message in the future from someone who may no longer exist. Certainly if we both exist now then in the future we will not be the same. You will have knowledge that I do not. I have knowledge that you will not and when you are reading this, I may not know what I know now. The bridge that is represented by this message is narrow and only operates one way. I cannot take everything that I may need across it because I do not know what I may need and you may not ask.

If we know each other, you could ask me a question sometime in the future and I could then reply in the future, though your question and my answer would forever exist in the past. There is this continuum to human communication that is independent of our individual existence. Any message in transit from the sender to the receiver is stored along the path. The message that is not communicated as a consummated transaction is a stored record.

Until some machine has the capacity of man, man machine communication will be different than man to man communication. The human mind has the capacity for mortal empathy, compassion, loyalty, and honor. Man attempts to influence the functional operation of machines but man attempts to influence the thinking of other human beings. It should be obvious from this that if man is not involved in the transaction then compelling human communication can not take place. Each time that we attempt communication and fail we store one more record in the past for a potential future.

Our fastest communications machines cannot teleport us into our future no matter how much we may wish that to be true. We may try to communicate instantly through technology but we fail because instant communication is not possible. This instant or the last instant or the next instant is relative and therefore the future is always relative. Though each message that we create for the future compels us to accept that what we are communicating exists in the here and now, though we are actually compartmenting the moments of our past. Each compartmentation that we open to consummate communication in the future delivers unforeseen influences. For those in the future, these influences can be seen simultaneously as opportunities and dangers of an unnecessary uncertainty of a moment long gone.

Future communication represents opportunities for both obtaining unknown knowledge and confirmation of knowledge that would have otherwise been lost. For those in the future, past thoughts and actions can be validated and certain knowledge, communicated from the past to the future can change the course of future events. Communicated knowledge can therefore be perceived as a threat if the decisions, thoughts and investments that we have made in the past are proven to be wrong, incorrect or immoral in the future.

People may not be comfortable manipulating or replacing traditions but from our perspective the alternative is for us to allow the future to live in ignorance. Maybe we should be so lucky right now. No I mean now. No now. Now...

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