LOGO-L> Auditory vs Visual

["James E. Hoburg" <james.e.hoburg@lucent.com>]

Tom Woods writes:
> I don't know if this qualifies as making auditory reading of morse more
> difficult, but it constrains reading speed to that of the transmission.
> Fatigue may become a factor after less words have been read, compared to
> visual reading. The ability to chunk visual letters into words could be a
> big advantage of visual representations.

  Then might even chunkier systems like ideograms be a superior visual
representation?

> Ironically, it may be the binary nature of morse that is the chief
> limitation. If more meaning could be added to each bit, the problem could be
> alleviated. Consider speech. It is an auditory serial transmission with rich
> phonetic packets of meaning. Reading speech is virtually automatic given
> clear quiet conditions.

  This is good!  So we have the amount of information carried by bits
vs. phonemes.  Still, cognitively we may guess at and zero-in on the
transmitted meaning as we receive the message--processing on-the-fly.  For
example, we hear the 1st phoneme, and can't be sure what's next, but when we
get the 2nd we can limit meaningful possibilities which could reasonably
follow the 1st and 2nd, and begin assuming endings before we receive the 3rd,
etc.  Utter conjecture, of course, but might not binary encodings be devised
which would support the same?

> Now, what advantages are there for auditory reading?

  Perhaps none for the sighted.  And a Morse-like code may not be richer or
more efficient than spoken language in the audio dimension.  But is Morse
representation inherently serial/auditory?  dot/dash could be arranged or
stacked on a page, or even presented as light flashes or 1s and 0s.

  (Pointless aside: For some reason, this entire thread has had me thinking of
the American inventor Thomas Edison.  Edison began as a talented telegrapher.
In a sense, he spoke Morse fluently.  He was hearing-impaired--a condition
which worsened during his life until he was finally deaf.  The phonograph was
the invention of a deaf person.

  He taught Morse to his wife-to-be, and during their courtship they would
converse by tapping out code into each other's palms with thier fingers.
Later in life, his wife would surreptiously relay dinner conversation to
Edison in the same fashion when they entertained.  This way Edison was able to
understand the chat and participate.)

  I'm not sure where this is going--sorry for the blather--and we're way
afield of Logo.  I guess I'm interested in representations and their relative
efficiencies.  You've made a good argument for inefficiencies in binary
representations.

Regards,
jeh
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