How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Remember to smile a lot, John Renfrew thought moodily. People seemed to like that. They never wondered why you kept on smiling, no matter what was said. It was a kind of general sign of good will, he supposed, one of the tricks he could never master. (1.1)
From the very first sentence, we see Renfrew struggling with a non-verbal form of communication—body language. Remember: This man is responsible for transmitting the message that might save the world, so his difficulties in communicating with people will, of course, bode well for the future of humanity.
Quote #2
"I got these, though." Cooper laid out another green rectangle. It showed a mixed pattern. At the right was a clean peak, its sides smooth and untroubled. But the center and left of the page was a meaningless jumble of scratchings. (3.41)
And here is the first occurrence of Renfrew's message coming into the past. But Gordon doesn't have the key to decipher it yet, so it just seems like a bunch of noise. Also, he doesn't know it's even a form of communication, making it even less likely he'll understand it. Imagine sending a text message to a knight in the Middle Ages, and you'll see the problem here.
Quote #3
From long exposure to the new methods of making books [Renfrew] had forgotten how a line of type could raise an impression on the other side of the page, as if the press of history was behind each word. The heavily leaded letters were broad and the ink a deep black. The ample margins, the precise celestial drawings, the heft of the volume in his hands, all seemed to speak of a time when the making of books was a signpost in an assumed march forward, a pressure on the future. (10.69)
Another form of communication explored in the novel is written communication, which can keep thoughts and ideas alive for centuries. The invention of written communication is arguably the most important tool in human history, but like Renfrew, it is something we can take for granted in our modern era.
Quote #4
REDUCTION OF OXYGEN CONTENT TO BELOW TWO PARTS PER MILLION WITHIN FIFTY KILOMETERS RADIUS OF SOURCE AFTER DIATOM BLOOM MANIFESTS AEMRUDYCO PEZQEASKL MINOR POLLUTANTS PRESENT IN DEITRICH POLYXTROPE 17A […]. (12.15)
So… Yep, those are words. But we don't know what they mean, and neither does Gordon. And that's a key point to understanding communication in Timescape. If the person receiving the information doesn't have some common ground—be it social, cultural, or even professional—then it can be really hard to communicate more than noise.
Quote #5
There was a blithe certainty that came from first comprehending the full Einstein field equations, arabesques of Greek letters clinging tenuously to the page, a gossamer web. They seemed insubstantial when you first saw them, a string of squiggles. Yet to follow the delicate tensors as they contracted, as the superscripts paired with subscripts, collapsing mathematically into concrete classical entities—potential; mass; forces vectoring in a curved geometry—that was a sublime experience. (15.44)
To answer a question we started this discussion with, yes, mathematical formulas are a form of communication. If you don't understand the language, physics equations look like a bunch of random squiggles—but to the initiated, equations are loaded with ideas and information for consumption.
Quote #6
The bit of playacting with Ramsey had bothered [Gordon] at first, but he realized it was part of dealing with people: you had to adopt their voice, see things from their point of view, if you wanted to communicate at all. Ramsey saw all this as a game with the first message as privileged information, and Shriffer as simply an interloper. Well, for the purposes of Ramsey's universe, so be it. (16.118)
Gordon brings up a pretty good point about communication here. That is, communication is relative to the person receiving the communication. Ramsey hears about the message and assumes spies; Saul hears about it and imagines E.T. trying to phone home.
Quote #7
"First, Peterson's not a scientist. Second, all that about suppressing emotion is mostly a convenient legend. When Newton and Hooke were having their famous dispute over who discovered the inverse square law, I'm sure they were livid with rage. But it took two weeks to get a letter back and forth. Newton had time to consider his reply. Kept the discussion on a high plane, y'see." (24.72)
Of course, the nature of communication has changed over the past couple centuries. Even since the time this novel came out, communication has changed immensely—now we can text someone instantly or use our smartphones to call anyone, anywhere. This would have blown our minds in 1998.
Quote #8
[Mrs. Bernstein] knew of spontaneous resonance and Saul Shriffer and the rest. She found it "interesting," she said, the standard word that committed you to nothing. (27.33)
Speaking of relativism in communication, let's talk about "interesting." The word technically means engaging, exciting, and holding our attention, but how many times have you heard someone use it to mean I don't know, I don't want to hurt your feelings, or let's talk about something else? All that packed into one little word. Interesting, isn't it?
Quote #9
Ramsey studied the interweaving curves. "Y'know, I didn't think anything of this at the time. But…"
"Yes?"
"Well, it looks like some sort of molecular chain to me. These dots…"
"The ones I connected up?"
"Yeah, I guess. You drew this first?"
"No, Saul unscrambled it from a coded sequence. What about them?"
"Well, maybe it's not a bunch of curves. Maybe the points are molecules. Or atoms. Nitrogen, hydrogen, phosphorus." (29.73-79)
Remember that Saul thought this image could be some form of code, but when Ramsey looks at it, he sees a molecular structure. Both men have perfectly good reasons for believing their interpretations, but Ramsey is right. It's not because he's smarter but because his unique circumstances as a biologist make him the intended recipient for the message.
Quote #10
He grimaced. See what would happen? Or had happened? Or could happen? Human language did not fit the physics. There was no tense of the verb to be that reflected the looping sense of time. No way to turn the language on the pivot of physics, to apply a torque that would make the paradoxes dissolve into an ordered cycle, endlessly turning. (45.2)
As people have expanded their knowledge, language has expanded to fit the ideas we've come up with. It's been rocky at times, and sometimes language needs to play catch-up, but we imagine it'll fall into step with physics soon.