At the end of twists and turns

Some people have made comments about the recent show Arrival.  In particular, I remember the comments they made about the language aspect portrayed in the movie.  The movie was very short on particulars, but it must have been enough to gain the respect of the public.

As I look at the first contact idea of sharing a language with another human species, I don't really have a cohesive theory about it.  However, I have given some thought about it since I heard a documentary about a man who claims to have heard an alien language and duplicated it for the television show.  It was a series of clicks, spaced like Morse Code dots and dashes.

In Arrival the language was communicated in written form, circles to be exact.  The circles have flame-like portions placed in different positions around the circle, and the flame-like designations seemed to be logographic or hieroglyphic in nature.  Of course, it was an invented language, but a cleverly conceived one.  The linguist in the movie, played by Amy Adams, was able to retrieve whole ideas from her "translations" of a number of different occurrences of the circles.

I am really thinking that any first contact we might have will exhibit the advancement of communication since an intelligence that could find us on Earth could dispense with something primitive like writing.  Even in our own culture, writing is taking a greatly diminished role from what it has been in the past.  So telepathy will probably occur because telepathy deals with thought patterns, and an advanced intelligence could communicate with the same thought patterns, especially if their culture had gone through similar phases of communication like Earth humans have passed through.

It's an intriguing study.  I would love to be on the communication team that has first contact with another intelligent species.  It would be challenging in many ways and pioneering to say the least, not knowing what to expect next.  At the moment I am pleased to just figure out how life is going to treat me next.  It is so filled with twists, turns and curves of all kinds that it poses challenges enough for me to figure out.  If trying to figure out the various relationships that occur is anything like figuring out another species' way of communicating, then I will happen on its many facets and be dismayed, fascinated, and elated, all in turn.

That's why it is called a journey.