Questions tagged [communication]
For questions relating to the exchange of ideas and information between beings.
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What would social media look like in a setting where communication wasn't instant, and where content quality might be deliberately downgraded?
It's the near future, humanity has discovered a new element in the asteroid field that allows faster than light travel and communication through a brute force methods that's largely handwaved away at ...
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Optical telegraph that can be seen as far as 90 km. How?
You see, I have this world that has the same planetary characteristics as Earth, and the people of the Snoopish Empire are building an optical telegraph net.
The only problem they have is that their ...
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Why would a language have three rhotic phonemes?
In my world, there is a mammalian species from the Homo genus called "ogres" (their scientific name is Homo obesus) (they are still humans, just not Homo sapiens) (Homo obesus means "...
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They made first contact and sent us engine plans, but how can we possibly build it?
First Contact
This is a prequel to a relativistic interstellar trade scheme I am currently building on.
An alien culture has sent a signal with design plans for solving an advanced anti-matter engine, ...
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What's a good excuse for getting back to cables instead of wireless?
Similar to how some sci-fi fashions excuses for going back to swords instead of lasers, I'm looking for something that fosters are more cable-bound society – disrupting wireless communication on the ...
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Only 35 random people from disappeared Earth population are alive at any one time, how long before "new" babies are born?
Based on: If everyone in the world disappeared except 35 random people, how long would it take for one of them to realize they're not alone?
Everyone suddenly disappears from Earth except 35 ...
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Replace pens by typewriters
It is 1950. I am a rich and crazy entrepreneur, who wants to replace pens with typewriters. I can try to influence (or lobby) any government in the world. I want my typewriter to be cheaper than pens, ...
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How can a wizard make a deal with a demon without interacting face-to-face? [closed]
Remember Bob the Wizard from this question? Well, Joe's annoyed him one too many times. However, he can't kill him the normal way, so he's decided he's going to hire a demon to kill him.
Bob knows all ...
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Non-sphericity of "omnidirectional" signals? [closed]
Short version: If an omnidirectional signal is being sent from one side of an object that causes appreciable attenuation does it result in an egg shaped detection envelop or something stranger?
Long ...
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Are the railroad and the telegraph inseparable inventions?
In my world, I'm trying to come up with reasons why trains are the fastest method of communication, and that brings into question:
Are the railroad and the telegraph inseparable? They both came into ...
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What would a website look like in a magic thought-based internet?
What would a website look like in a magic thought-based internet?
After getting some really interesting answers on this question, I decided to make a magic "internet", with a lot of similar ...
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Would clickbait work inside someone's brain? Click here to find out!
Let's assume that there is a magic that can push information directly into people's brains. However, that magic has some limitations:
It can only "push" single sentences of 15 words or less
...
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How would an inter-planetary [not inter-stellar] recycling/scavenging team know when ships have crashed?
In my world, there is a certain group of 'scavengers' — people who go around and pick out valuable (and salvageable, of course) objects from ships that have crashed [onto the surface of a moon/planet],...
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Controlling the late-medieval world with just a network of agents and instant communication
The World Controlling Agency
I have long had a concept about a world-spanning NGO; an organisation with the power to start and end wars, and whose CEO any monarch would kneel to rather than risk their ...
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Rapidly building a world-spanning communication infrastructure
In 2028, all the major telecommunications companies unified. "We already have to work tightly together in order to maintain cross-continent communication systems, and we can reduce costs if we ...
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Communications in a vacuum
We have a human, magically protected so they can function in a vacuum. How will they be able to communicate? (The closest equivalent of suit radios--except they aren't wearing a suit.)
I would think ...
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How to interpolate between the physical, material universe with relativistic reference frames and a spiritual objective reference frame?
I'm new here and I assume that it might be weird to have souls in a science-fiction question but hear me out. While souls in my setting do have some magical unexplainable supernatural properties, it ...
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How would basic telegraphs affect how ancient societies are governed? [closed]
At this point the only power source available are Galvanic cells, & the only other use found for them is light bulbs. Aside from the basic electricity everything is at the same level of technology ...
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What EM band would be least noticed if I started globally broadcasting white noise on it?
Suppose I created a private network of peer-to-peer cellphones and started handing phones out to people globally. Now, these phones don't have to use the common cell phone bands of the EM spectrum... ...
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Would floating messages down a river be an effective means of mail?
Suppose there was a country with a mountain or mountain range that is the source of a few major rivers. Would floating messages down the rivers (to settlements or post offices on the river) be an ...
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How would a robot make noise and speak without built in speakers?
A common trope with technologically advanced races is the lack of a need for speech. Machine races that self optimise usually forgo spoken languages all together, instead opting for completely ...
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How do dragons communicate? [closed]
Dragons are giant intelligent monitor lizards. They are intelligent enough to communicate in a human-like manner. They can hiss, but can't make anymore complex sounds. They are also quadrupedal, and ...
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How to write martial/magic arts manuals so they can be deciphered and practised in a distant future?
TL;DR
This question is about an information encoding method/system. The text below describes the types of information that need to be encoded and lists limitations existing in the world I am building. ...
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How would radios impact pre-modern society?
Suppose that radios (or magic with a similar effect) were available during the Medieval or Renaissance era. They're too expensive to give to every soldier or install in every town, but a knight might ...
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Use of Sound in a Radio and Electric Communication Enabled Species
Alright, so I was bouncing ideas off the wall about how the society of a species (maybe genetically modified humans?) with biological radio communication and electric field communication would look ...
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What type of lullabies would a D&D-style dragon sing to their eggs - particularly ice dragons? [closed]
D&D style dragons come out of the egg knowing languages meaning that they had to learn it somewhere. I'm not interested in that. What I want to know is, that assuming Dragon lullabies are like ...
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Range of radio with no ionosphere
Given a planet otherwise similar to Earth, but which has (for reasons outside the scope of this question) no ionosphere, what would be the effective range of radio communication?
I understand radio ...
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How would micromachines communicate?
The magic system of Second Earth boils down to "micromachines doing stuff". Of course, there are many layers of complexity to it.
These micromachines are produced in the bodies of sapient ...
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How could a message system made by spheres work?
In my story, people communicate through "orbs", which are spheres of a material similar to glass, but much more resistant. Basically people write a message on them with their fingers and the ...
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How can I store energy/data reliably for 300 million years?
Following this question: How can I implement time travel on a somewhat realistic way?
Considering I have a way of getting energy into the past (as said on the previous question), I need a way of ...
user84509
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How would the ancient aliens leave an instruction manual
In the future humans have used generational ships to explore the galaxy. It's taken centuries but we have finally found several habitable planets (they are not without their challenges of course).
On ...
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Reconcile time travel paradox using entanglement
Imagine a crazy nut with exceptional intelligence managed to sent radiowave signals across multiple timelines, 10 years into the past and the future. That messages contained a blueprint of a time ...
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Why might radios not be effective in a post-apocalyptic world?
The setting is a post-apocalyptic world in the near-future (100-200 years), where remaining humans are living in a few domed cities scattered around the world. The reason for living in the domes, and ...
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How do telecom companies survive when everyone suddenly knows telepathy?
One day a small meteorite impact occurred somewhere over the Pacific Ocean, and moments later a mysterious green glow sweeps across the globe at an amazing speed.
All of a sudden everyone can hear ...
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How do spaceships compensate for the Doppler shift in their communication frequency?
Assume all radio communication bandwidth used in interstellar communication is standardized to a certain fixed range and all must be frequency modulated but know that no agency is keeping track ...
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What might block satellite communications (or make them very hard to use)
Imagine a world with two allied nations (countries, kingdoms...) that are separated by a large geographical distance. Those two nations would be at about the same level of development as our (real ...
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How can an advanced civilization help another to overcome the first challenges of the space age?
An advanced civilization, like ours could be in a couple of hundred years, realized that the most challenging time in their history was when they had the knowledge to make global changes, but not the ...
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What would rotating ears look like on a humanoid species?
I'm trying to make a biologically accurate, human looking species. Since they can't make many sounds, they also use their ears' positions and rotation to have an advanced vocabulary. So the same sound ...
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Long range communication on a rogue Earth?
Imagine that, for unknown reasons, the Earth has left the solar system. It has been a while now since the event. It's so cold outside that the polar caps met at the equator and the atmosphere froze ...
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What if the speed of light was based off wavelength?
Im making a sci fi story (first part here) and I needed a cool and interesting way to make ftl communication possible, at first I thought, make the speed of light infinite but thats kinda boring so I ...
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An alphabet with alternating reading order
I am in the middle of designing a con-lang that features, among other things a letter reading order that alternates by line from left-to-right to right-to-left and back again. My justification for ...
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Moon base internet functionality
It's 2020 and I've decided the perfect location for my next villainous lair is on the Moon (Earth has too many pesky heroes after all). Fortunately, construction and transit shouldn't be too difficult,...
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What is the nature of the interstellar message to be accepted by a civilization comparable to humanity at the end of the nineteenth century (19th)?
In a sense, humanity has long been capable of transmitting interstellar messages (METI (messages to extraterrestrial civilizations) - attempts to transmit interstellar messages from humanity to ...
user79894
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How do I announce us to the entire galaxy?
The main problem with sending interstellar messages is that with the distance traveled, their power gradually decreases due to gradual scattering ( diffraction). Imagine that you threw a stone into ...
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Could aliens communicate by excreting slime?
Bear with me :) The aliens in my story are gastropod-like entities and I would really like them to communicate through the mucus they excrete. What could such communication look like?
Preliminary ...
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Could two smart phones work as an intercom on an alien planet?
This question is a follow up to a previous question asked by @AvengingEarth
Would a smart phone work on an alien planet?
I'm interested in taking a step further.
All conditions are as in the previous ...
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Telex more popular than telephones
This question is inspired by the answer for another question.
What changes in technological development after the World War 2 could have led the telex machines to be more popular than telephones, ...
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Communication between City States in Giant Monster World
I'm building a world, which takes place about 300 years in the future after an event in the near future, in which giant elemental monsters started to roam around the earth. These creatures are an ...
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What movies would you show aliens to show we are friendly? [closed]
Here is an idea that I wanted to play around with but unfortunately hit a brick wall with. Human explorers have found a less advanced intelligent technological species on a faraway planet. For the ...
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A Truly Universal Listening Device?
The CGI (Cosmic Gateway Interface) System is a set of commands which (nearly?) anyone anywhere can intone in order to trigger some kind of alien tech (which exists somewhere far away), which opens a ...
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