Rainbows End Language and Communication Quotes

Okay, we confess: we pulled this quote because we're amused that Miri thinks Ezra Pound is a she. But we also pulled it because it contains one of Miri's ideas about communication and technology: trying to read poetry on a view-page is like seeing the world through a keyhole—so you can imagine how little respect she has for books. (It would be like looking through a… pinhole, maybe?) For Miri, this sort of info is everywhere out there, while Robert thinks of books as a main form of communication technology.

Although there's lots of cool tech for communicating (like all that silent messaging), some old forms are still pretty good. In fact, this is an idea we hear at least twice: here with Lena and later with Winston Blount, where his "glare was as good as any high-tech messaging" (26.24). So far all the high-tech stuff, some of the old-fashioned ways to communicate still come in handy… at least for old people.

Again, for all the cool tech in the book, sometimes the old ways are best… particularly when the cool tech doesn't work for some reason. Here, Robert would normally snoop, but Bob and Alice have put up some sort of privacy restriction on part of the house. But they can't stop him from sneaking out of his door and snooping the "old-fashioned way." Maybe they are vulnerable to that sort of snooping because they're mostly used to dealing with high-tech snooping? So, bonus points to Robert for making his old age and old habits work. (And let's add the fact that Alice and Bob make the living room private communicates that they're talking about something important enough to be snooped on.)

Without communicating it explicitly, Robert and Carlos Rivera have figured out that both of them have bargained with the Mysterious Stranger/Rabbit. It's amusing to us that Stranger/Rabbit tries to stop them from communicating more, but that very comment reveals stuff. By telling them not to talk about it, Rabbit has given away that there is something to talk about.

If you wanted to write a paper on how "Technology" interacts with "Communication," you might want to look here. Note that Robert is using some old technology in the steam tunnels, so he has to type out his message. (And don't you just love his txtspeak abbrevs? Very early 2000s.) But Miri, who has her wearable computer still, just needs to move her chin and she sends a message in very clear English. (Even with italics!)

Even when the high-tech communication breaks down, people still find ways to communicate. Winston might have to make do with glares, but Xiu Xiang came prepared for this with a high/low-tech solution of bouncing a signal off the sky haze. (It would be clouds elsewhere, but San Diego is a cloudless paradise.) As with Rabbit trying to prevent revelations in the quote above, communication is hard to stop totally. Which brings us to—

In a moment of almost complete technological failure, we're reduced to our most primitive technology: talking to each other. However, even at this moment when communication seems reduced to its most basic, it still seems pretty effective. Maybe people don't have access to Twitter so they can't see the bigger picture (as Alfred Vaz can), but the communication that is going on seems helpful to these people.

One of our big questions about silent messaging (SM) is how close it is to actual telepathy. Like here, Alfred is getting away after his plans have been ruined. So he's a little upset. But what does this quote mean when it says "his body betrayed him"? Does that mean that, without meaning to, his body made the little moves that would send this message through his wearable computer? If so, why doesn't that happen more often?

Juan and Robert's final project is a "symbol" for the difficulty of getting people to work together. (And some other stuff.) But it's also an excellent example of the difficulties and possibility of communication: they had to coordinate a whole worldwide network of people to get this simple communication to work. There's even more here to note about communication and how different people use it: notice that Tommie is still lugging around that laptop, though Xiu Xiang is able to communicate via sm.

As we know from "Literature and Writing" (and also from the whole book), Robert is (or was) a pretty good put-words-togetherer. And yet, when it comes to writing his ex-wife a letter, it takes him forever to write a simple message. The quote here drives this home by switching between making it seem simple—"a simple message," "less than two hundred words"—and emphasizing how hard and important it is—it takes two hours, and they are "the most important words." No matter how easy it is to communicate, it can be hard to tell people how you feel.