CARAMELLDANSEN

Stock market rave! ER rave! Funeral rave! Raves everywhere!

I’m re-listening to 3 Body for the 2nd time :) I’ve thought a little of the consequences of using light to communicate instead of sound. Tri-Solarans can probably easily communicate very long distances naturally. I also thought maybe this style of communication makes them more apt to computer technology in general as the light modulation is what a lot of computing is. I also wondered if “conversing” with a computer is more natural for them and much simpler for a computer to interpret compared to speech.

My wife will try to pulse light at me while I’m asleep or in another room.

A lot of epileptics are gonna have a very bad time

Epileptics are not going to be thrilled, neither are the blind. Buy stock in aspirin because migraines and headaches are going to increase. Driving at night will become a silent affair. No more covert night ops.

In no particular order, here are my thoughts:

• most languages need to reform in large ways due to being at least partially tonal/inflection based (such as a rise in inflection to indicate a question). All languages need to add an additional conveyance mechanism to account for the loss of tone and inflection to indicate feeling, and anything else speech patterns normally convey, as suddenly all language works like texting
• people suddenly suck at talking in exactly the same ways they suck at writing, because they have to pick the right conjunction or homophone. Good luck two us all
• directional blinder hats would be a thing almost immediately (something that shields the light but has a covered hole in front to selectively open however wide you need, probably with hand controls and color filters and shit)
• light pollution dies down to facilitate conversation, but dark sky areas have to shutter their projects due to conversational twinkling (sad outcome :( )
• indoor light gets dimmer to facilitate conversation. 60 more stubbed toes happen every month
• sunglasses become the new unplugged headphones
• someone develops filtering goggles that cut the specific human communication wavelengths for people with epilepsy. They are a big hit with commuters and parents
• since people can no longer talk but it sounds like all else remains the same, someone would develop a translation device that does “blinks to speech” for blind and epileptic people, who could maintain use of the auditory old language and still function fine in society (good outcome, yay!) (I considered how they communicate back, but there’s no reason their light thing wouldn’t work so this is fine)
• more people opt to have their outer eyelids removed so they can eavesdrop on conversation while looking like they are sleeping (weird outcome, but it is a surgery that exists and divers sometimes elect to get it done to avoid wearing a mask. Inner eyelid is left in place, can’t tell from outside, but you can see through it apparently)
• private conversations become much more difficult, which forces everyone to act nicer in public, which reduces the amount of time people can be shitty, which in turn makes everyone nicer (yay happy outcomes!)
• it gets a lot harder to hide that you are watching porn or kinky boning when the blinking light gives away the… dialogue. Blackout curtain and door light stopper sales skyrocket literally overnight
• people rarely go missing in the woods or in wrecks. Everyone has a beacon every night, and there are huge social awareness campaigns to use your light this way. An international help pulse is developed so no matter where a person gets lost, they can blink for aid. 1km is quite far, meaning they would light up the area around them, especially multiple people blinking in unison. A project is launched to have satellites scan the night-facing surface looking for the pulse pattern, and is wildly successful. There is a brief trend among young teens to cry wolf, until the bills for wasting global resources start rolling in
• lots of famous people suddenly find themselves jobless, as singing is no longer a career. Since light pulses are completely sensually unrelated to music, instrumental music makes a big comeback, as do poetry recitations and stage plays. All the weirdo instruments from over the course of history are resurrected (best attempt) to add variety to the cultural landscape once filled with voices
• television and movies lose cultural significance as they lose the ability to tell many of the stories they do now (blinky light gives away your location in horror, ruins ambiance for romance, interrupts action sequences, etc. it’s just not amazing for the current form of visual entertainment)
• translation becomes a lot easier, as the effects of accents and dialects diminish. The light pulses can easily be read by software and translated to a different pattern (human speech sounds are so so much harder to parse)
• people have an easier time learning other languages now that everyone shares the same blinks framework; no pronunciation difficulties, just new patterns
• animals mostly very much dislike humans, and find us quite alarming. The blinking doesn’t help. Animals trained to respond to verbal cues have to be retrained to understand the blinks are an attempt to communicate something to them. Many animals now have problems in their homes due to the change (very sad outcome :( )

Morse code: am I a joke to you?

Sign language becomes more prevalent

Fiber-optic “phone calls”?

I’m going to place an angled mirror from the bathroom to the kitchen so I can blink to my wife to bring toilet paper. Or a towel.

• The light is beamed from the human head in 360 degrees when ever they communicate, visible for up to 1KM

This sounds extremely impractical. It’s like everyone can only yell at the top of their lungs. At least we can choose to focus on the person we’re interested in and ignore background “noise”. But someone trying to get our attention would be difficult. Now we can just call someone’s name from behind them. Something equivalent would be impossible.

Nearly all existing media (radio, songs, TV, movies, YouTube videos, …) will eventually lose its appeal, as (for new born people at least) it will effectively be in a foreign language, that uses a completely separate mode of communication. You can’t share Back to the Future with anyone new anymore.

But all of Star Wars gets a remaster with a CGI light-speech dub.

Remember: Light cannot penetrate walls

Glass: “Am I a joke to you?”