It’s easy, sometimes, to forget. It’s easy, in our 9-to-5 (or 7-to-7) world, in our productivity-driven culture, with our demand for reliability and structure, to lose heart. It’s easy, when so many of us repeat the same habits day after day, with an almost robotic persistence… to overlook the fact that it’s all run by human beings.

And human beings, contrary to popular belief (tongue firmly in cheek), are far from perfect. We screw up. We make misguided decisions. We get sidetracked, distracted, interested in other things. Our productivity is affected by things like our comfort, our moods, and even the weather. We are not machines, no matter how much our corporate overlords may treat us as such.

This is as true on the Internet as it is anywhere else — and Don’tASQ is no exception. I’ve not written an article in six weeks. Being that I am (currently) its only writer, by extension, this means Don’tASQ has had no new content in six weeks. I don’t consider this acceptable by any stretch of the mind, but I’m not about to make excuses for my “absence.” I am a human being. I suffer from the same afflictions as anyone else, and just about every imaginable slip of the mind has occurred at some point since my last article. I think that’s all that needs to be said.

Regarding the website’s future: Yes, I do have a few things in the cooker (as always). I cannot and will not make any promises, but I’m being absolutely truthful when I say that this website — and my possible career as a writer — have been on my mind very consistently as of late. It’s safe to say, though, that the near future will not contain many updates. For that, I can only apologize.

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I’d like to look at communication from a perspective which is probably unfamiliar to most readers. In my last article, I suggested that communication between people could be compared to that between digital devices. In the world of computer networking, the OSI model exists to provide an abstract description of various communication protocols. In simple terms, it’s a complete paradigm of how computers communicate; I’ll be turning it into a paradigm of how humans communicate. I won’t be explaining the OSI model in excruciating detail — that would be too technical for most readers — but I will be giving just enough details for you to understand the analogy.

The seven-layer OSI model essentially provides for a top-down/bottom-up description of how a “message” moves between a sender and a receiver. The layers are numbered as follows:

1. Physical
2. Data Link
3. Network
4. Transport
5. Session
6. Presentation
7. Application

When two devices communicate, the “sender” first generates a message in the Application layer which is processed and broken down until it reaches the Physical layer. At the Physical layer, the message is literally transmitted, bit by bit, to the “receiver.” The receiver then compiles the message and passes it up to its own Application layer.

As a simplistic example of this, think about your web browser. Your browser is an application. When you open it and surf to http://www.dontasq.com, one of the first actions your browser takes is to determine where you want to go (www.dontasq.com) and the protocol you want to use to communicate once you get there (HTTP). Most of this communication takes place “behind the scenes.” There are protocols in the other layers which determine, among other things, where dontasq.com is actually located and how to find it. The end result, however, is very visible — the web server (another application) at dontasq.com returns a page coded in HTML, which your web browser displays.

Enough technical mumbo-jumbo. Let’s use this to put a new perspective on human communication…

1. “Medium” (Physical)
   The medium is pretty easy to understand — this is how a message literally travels from sender to receiver. When you say “Hello” to Jane, your mouth sends vibrations through the air which her ears pick up. Without a medium, no communication can ever take place.
   Examples: Air, telephone, e-mail.
   Failure: The call dies. A computer crashes. Someone puts on headphones.
   How to prevent failure: Pretty much everything that’s described here. Just communicate!
2. “Language” (Data Link)
   In the digital world, one of the responsibilities of the Data Link layer is to negotiate how to use a given medium. In some ways, human language does the same thing — it dictates the syllables we should transmit through the air, or the symbols we should form with our hands. Written language dictates the shapes we should draw on paper (or “paper,” in the electronic sense). Without language, a message cannot be understood. It may be sent with a very specific meaning, but the receiver won’t be able to decode that meaning.
   Examples: English. Sign language. Body language, conscious or unconscious.
   Failure: Most often, a language failure would occur due to… well, two people speaking different languages (or a very primitive language, in the case of babies). “Language” might be defined as a way of understanding such that certain brain disorders would be included.
   How to prevent failure: Educate yourself! Learn a new language.
3. “Identification” (Network)
   On the Internet, every computer may be uniquely identified in several different ways, such as by an IP address or a MAC address. People are no different; your name, facial features, and phone number are all a part of your identification. Just as a computer can’t send a message to a non-existent computer, a person can’t communicate (at least not meaningfully) with nothingness. When we have something to say, we also have someone in mind to whom we want to say it. This is not to say that we can’t communicate with someone we don’t recognize — but we always need a target for our message, whether it’s a stranger on the street or JohnDoe123 in a chat room.
   Examples: Scott Helvick. “That girl in the blue shirt.” 555-555-5555.
   Failure: A phone number or e-mail address out of service. False identification, i.e. being fooled into communicating with someone who wasn’t your intended target. (In the digital world, this is known as a man-in-the-middle attack.)
   How to prevent failure: In the real world, the best way to ensure that you’re really talking with your intended target is to choose a medium which allows for the best identification — usually face-to-face. A sticky note left on someone’s door is never a safe way to tell your darkest secrets.
4. “Greeting” (Transport)
   The Transport layer is responsible for facilitating “end-to-end” communication. On the Internet, this means that it’s assuming that dontasq.com has already been found; we merely need to connect to it and start a “session.” In human terms, we want to start a conversation, and the first step to doing that is to send a greeting. Can a conversation begin without a greeting? Yes, just as some computer networking protocols will allow data transmission without an established connection (we call these connectionless protocols). But it’s likely to cause some confusion at first — people are generally connection-oriented, meaning that they like their “hellos” and “goodbyes.”
   Examples: “Bonjour!” Waving. Tapping someone on the shoulder.
   Failure: The dreaded silent treatment. Trying to converse with someone without getting their attention first, resulting in, “Were you talking to me?”
   How to prevent failure: Use basic mannerisms. On the phone, state your name before beginning to talk. In person, observe someone’s body language to make sure that they’re paying attention to you. On an instant messaging client, don’t expect a reply from someone whose status is “Away.”
5. “Conversation” (Session)
   A conversation is pretty self-explanatory; at this layer, our meaningful messages are transmitted back and forth. Once a session is established, there’s usually no need to re-open it — that’s why we don’t need to say “hello” every other word. The OSI model even provides for features like error correction (”Sorry, can you repeat that?”) and graceful closure (”I love you!” “I love you, too!” *kiss kiss*).
   Examples: Anything and everything, but usually restricted to current events, gossip, and endless complaining.
   Failure: The session somehow becomes interrupted or disconnects prematurely. One party has to leave quickly or stomps away in a fury. Someone isn’t paying attention, causing a lot of “errors” in transmissions.
   How to prevent failure: This topic alone is worthy of multiple articles. Above all, pay attention and practice good listening skills. If necessary, don’t be afraid to (assertively) ask your conversation partner to pay more attention.
6. “Formatting” (Presentation)
   Whereas the first five layers dealt primarily with connecting and beginning a conversation, the Presentation layer actually deals with message contents. Think about receiving a present, opening it, and deciding what to do with it. Formatting is what determines the difference between “man eating tofu” and “man-eating tofu.” What this layer does not deal with is whether the message actually makes sense in the current conversation. We don’t particularly care whether the conversation jumps from weather to tofu to Britney’s latest oopsies, as long as we can understand each individual message. In other words, we care about content, but not meaning (that’s the next layer).
   Examples: “Alice went to Six Flags.” “Scott writes great articles!” “My keyboad is boken!”
   Failure: Ambiguity or poor grammar. Anything that causes the message itself to be jumbled or not completely “decoded.”
   How to prevent failure: Proofread, proofread, proofread. Make sure you understand all of the subtle nuances of the language you’re using — especially if you’re talking to me.
7. “Thought” (Application)
   This is the layer of critical thinking, the layer where messages are both created and understood in their complete context. If you try to move a conversation from weather to tofu to Britney, any intelligent person will call you out on it right here. Thought is a layer of abstraction. Messages are created, but only in a sense of meaning — the Presentation layer is where phrases are formed.
   Examples: “Hello!” “Oh, hey, what’s going on? You seem out of breath…” “Yeah! I just escaped from a mountain of man-eating tofu!”
   Failure: You or your conversation partner obsessively changed the subject to a point of confusion. Many failures will be due to some form of ignorance; for example, a foreign tourist not completely understanding your cultural reference. You could also consider certain brain disorders, such as amnesia.
   How to prevent failure: This is another topic worthy of multiple articles. Practice communication skills and be careful with cultural references or inside jokes.

Can the OSI model be applied to animal communication as well as to that of humans? I believe so. Animals won’t have a wide array of contexts to “discuss,” nor will their languages have strict grammatical requirements, but we could probably strip off the top two or three layers and apply the model just the same.

Communication is both an art and a science; regardless of the perspective from which we view it, communication is vital and it could never hurt to brush up on our skills — especially when dealing with introverts.

A couple of weeks ago, I combed through the Don’tASQ archives, removing several old testing and other “junk” posts. (Which posts? It doesn’t matter — you never read them. ) That’s when I came across this unfinished series titled “Making the Change”. It was supposed to be a five-part series; I’d written three of them before I decided that I could no longer continue. My heart simply wasn’t in it, and the quality of my writing was starting to deteriorate — something that I refuse to allow in anything I publish. In short, I failed. I’d set the expectation that I would deliver a product to my readers, but that product ended up only 60% completed. Where I come from, that’s a D-.

But I didn’t delete these posts. I didn’t try to cover up my mistakes, didn’t attempt to sweep them under the rug and hope Google didn’t cache them. Why not? Because I believe in honesty and genuineness. The Internet is a medium which tends to make us believe (falsely) that we can retract our words effortlessly and without consequence. If Blurblog posts were handwritten letters, would we be able to undeliver them? If they were spoken words, could we take them back?

By admitting our failures — regardless of their nature — and letting go of the past, we encourage mutual trust and free ourselves to focus on doing better next time. As far as Making the Change… if even one person is helped by my unfinished series, then I don’t consider it a failure at all.