Minimal Communication

Instead of saying "I am hungry" , just saying  "hunger', is practiced by some tribes.

Now, How that is achievable in development.
We spend lots of hours in learning, training, communicating on Internet, reading etc..  The flow of data is enormous.
Now how much information is that we really need to read and write?. The minimal words with which we can express our ideas or data can generate  a different approach for development.

Social Programmer
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Double Plus Good

Wednesday, April 7, 2004

How do those tribe say: I was hungry, are you hungry, [s]he is hungry and so on.

The 'minimal communication' would probably be what the communication's zipped content is.

Ignore my ignorance
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Does the fact that this practice is now only found in groups that use a primitive social organization and, I presume, live in primitive conditions, do anything to recommend this approach to communication?

But wait, let's try it:

Dumb

Hey! It works.

Sumbody
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

I don't think this practice is confined just to uncivilized people.  You see something similar in any group where rapidly transferring information is important.  Think about ER surgeons or airplane pilots or police dispatchers.  All of them use a sort of verbal shorthand to convey information quickly and concisely.

Emperor Norton
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

> Instead of saying "I am hungry" , just saying  "hunger', is
> practiced by some tribes.

Really? What tribes are those?

Michael Eisenberg
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

Just edit your words better:

Some tribes just say "hunger' to mean "I am hungry".

Can this idea apply to development?

We spend many hours learning, training, communicating on Internet, reading etc..  The flow of data is enormous.
Does our communication need this information?

Expressing ideas or data with minimal words can create a different development approach.

--

In the IT industry few people know how to write concise language.  Native-born speakers have this problem even more than foreigners. This creates major communication problems like the 300 page requirement document that no one on the team can stand reading.

NathanJ
Wednesday, April 7, 2004

On the other end of the spectrum from the 300 page document is the one page document that is so concise that it provides no information unless you already know it.

Being able to unambiguously convey information in a concise manner is not an easy task and is not natural for most people.

madking
Thursday, April 8, 2004

It is accepted by all linguists that all languages display a similar level of complexity.

The level of overt grammatical complexity has nothing to do with the economic development of the group that speak the language.

Stephen Jones
Thursday, April 8, 2004

Subject-object-verb, only. Perhaps, no subject. No prepostions, articles, conjunctions. Maybe punctuations.

KayJay
Thursday, April 8, 2004

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