Somebody says that need is the mother of invention.
As usual, I am following the approach of alternating technology and political articles- today, an article about communication, memory, technology, and the transmission and storage of information.
This lunch-time short article starts as a generic description, in non-technical terms, adds some boring details, and closes again with a generic description.
Let’s say that this morning I had another set of catalysts: need, of course, boredom, and… a cappuccino.
First and foremost: I will describe what I call a cappuccino- a coffee topped with whole milk turned into a foam, that, with every sip, releases both some caffeine and some milk.
The structure and texture of the foam? Depends on the quantity of air that you insert.
But, in the end, you notice only if there is not enough air- it there is more than needed, it does not really affect your sensory experience.
Steganography is usually meant to be inserting into, say, a picture additional information that does not affect the original picture enough to distort it, but that can be extracted if you know where to look for.
As I started some time ago to study Chinese (to be precise, in late 2009, to have a couple of long-term projects balancing my short-term activities at the time), and I spent a nice chunk of my life structuring and organizing information, I was toying with an idea to merge a concept that I discovered by chance, but then first read described in a book from F. Yates on theatre and memory.
Actually- my first organization attempt was to be able to navigate through the books contained in my parents’ library- trying standard techniques such as the UDC/Dewey classification, thematic arrangement, and ending up with a visual “zoning” of books, linked to a mental association with the themes, not the details, contained in each book.
As for Chinese, while I am focusing on pinyin, I am also in parallel learning characters.
I started with 4-chars pages, and now moved to 9- to 12-chars pages, learned in chunks, but then remembered and visualized in pages, mirroring the visual image of each page with its pinyin equivalent.
Now, while I remember that my book on Japanese long ago contained 1920 characters (or something like that), the number of characters needed to read a normal newspaper is said to be exceeding 3000- and the educational tests go up to 5000.
If you spend as much time as I did to organize knowledge, the obvious purpose is distributing it.
I admire those who collect specific objects for their dedication- but I tried to collect stamps and others items, and, in the end, communication is much more interesting- as when sharing, you end up re-assessing what you know with each and any interaction.
Working in technology for over 20 years (over 30, if you consider that I wrote the first program in late 1970s, in Fortran IV on punched cards, as a test), you end up thinking a lot about the storage and transmission of information.
And transmission includes both encoding what you want to communicate, and decoding it at the receiving end, so that you can understand.
Yes, I worked with the old modems whistling at 1200bps: an American professor at my university in Turin was able to connect with the computer by… whistling into the phone!
In between, you could have intentional transformations, such as encoding to adapt to the medium you use to transmit, or various methods of obfuscating, so that the message can be understood only by the intended recipient.
Unfortunately, most methods of transmission require the use of both communication and encoding tools, ranging from radios to computer software or specialized devices.
In the book I quoted above (after studying it in libraries, I think that my sister bought a copy for me as a gift, long ago- but it is down in Italy), F. Yates described how monks’ daily walks in the paved cloister weren’t just walks.
Each stone, each step, each symbol represented something, and was a “hook” to which to link a specific bit of knowledge- the same approach of the rosary or similar “memory tools” used in various religions to remind prayers.
I had learned before a similar mnemonic approach in Zen variants, but including also the “kinetic” part of the walk (including your own respiration).
In what we in the West call “Mandarin”, there are 4 basic tones to potentially apply to few hundred basic sounds- which means that many characters share the same sound, and therefore combinations of sounds (the “context”) help to solve any ambiguity.
I was thinking about a faster way to communicate all those characters, and then I said to myself: to remember, I listen to the sound, write on a whiteboard to replicate the shape, and remember the movements associated with each character (and, eventually, any information associated with it).
Now, to write on computers, I used sometimes a standard 4-char code, unique for each of most common characters (let’s say 5000, and up to 16000).
When I write on my whiteboard, I use different colours, also to mark my mistakes, and remember this way the most difficult spots.
So, on the way to my cappuccino (2kms), and while looking at the cappuccino or the paved walkway I thought: when I buy earphones, I check for the range, and I see marked 10-20000 Hz or something similar.
And I remember that the human eye can spot a minimal light spot, and wondered what would be the equivalent for the human ear, as recently I had to learn to better discriminate and ignore specific frequencies.
So, if we divide the visible spectrum according to the normal eye capability to “understand” colour, and we do the same for the audible spectrum, we can devise a way to associate each character with a specific frequency.
Transmission could then be much more efficient: instead of telling characters, also as a 4-char code, you can voice the character, have it converted into a specific visual or audio impulse, transmit it with the appropriate tool (fibre optic or radio), and decode it at the arrival point.
Moreover: if the transmission is done following a code that is commonly agreed, as people can learn the full Bible or Morse code, they can also learn the list of codes, so that, in case of failure of the equipment converting back to voiced characters, they can just use their senses.
Interesting also to build permanent storage “devices” that require no equipment.
Also a memory device as simple as a piece of glass could be used to “pack” more information. Or a bit of metal that produces the appropriate tones.
So, no batteries or moving parts to maintain- and (almost) permanent storage, whatever the conditions (i.e. lack of electricity, interferences).
If we have now 3D printers using basically styrofoam (or something more advanced) to reproduce objects, why not printing on glass or metal-bending printers?
And if you want to remove audio/visual, you can use, say, the feed-back approach used in some computer interfaces (joysticks, etc.) to build a “data glove” that delivers specific pression to transmit the message without any visible or audible communication.
In the case of Chinese characters, the funny memory trick would be to associate the image of a character, its meanings, normal pronunciation with a single colour or tone at the appropriate frequency.
As my walk is about 2km long each way, I had few minutes to think about derivative uses- inspired by the cappuccino foam.
And, of course, as anybody that has worked long enough on storing and protecting information contained in computers, the first that came up to mind is as a way to evolve steganography, for a story that I was planning to write on future communication.
If you ever heard modern music, there are plenty of “spurious” frequencies: so, adding a tone every once in a while would not distort the original musical intent enough to be audible, while it would allow to communicate the information to those who know where to look for it.
And the same could be done visually, now that most newspapers and magazines publish online digital pictures.
The upside of the encoding system and the subsequent encryption before transmission?
No need to have any device on the receiving end.
You just need to remember the original tones, and the your own personal algorithm (maybe just a piece of multicoloured glass, or the days’ front-page picture, or memorizing a song or a picture) to convert it.
Eventually, I checked online the actual resolution of the audible frequencies: “The normal human ear can detect the difference between 440 Hz and 441 Hz” (an interesting set of articles here).
Well, I was thinking on 10Hz increments, to allow for error and transmission quality, so it is certainly more than enough.
As for my story that will use these concepts… well, there will be time.
