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.

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Imagine for a moment that you’re in charge of a group of ten people. Your job is to get these ten people to do something useful together. The catch, however, is that nobody (including you) is allowed to communicate in any form — speech, signing, text messaging… — with anyone else. Try to make a list of all of the extraordinary things you could do. Launch a rocket? Highly doubtful. Write a book? My intuition says no. Plan a movie night? Good luck. If you come up with anything more complex than a “teamwork exercise” your kids might do at summer camp, I’ll be impressed.

The obvious point here is that communication is absolutely essential in both the professional and personal realms of our daily lives.

Even some non-living things need to communicate. For example, before you were able to read this post, your computer had to contact a web server and request the information. The server then had to oblige and send that information back. In the technology world, one of the most basic forms of digital communication is known as a “ping.” A ping is used by one device to check the status of another; think of it as a computer shouting “Hello?” to another computer. Normally, the other computer responds (”Hello!”) within milliseconds, indicating that it is “alive.”

In human terms, when we “ping” a friend or a neighbor, we hope for a quick response. If we try to start a conversation with a friend who is responding slowly (for example, an instant messaging conversation with several minutes between messages), we might conclude that our friend is very busy, maybe with other conversations. It’s also possible that he may not respond at all. In the technology world, there are several potential causes for this, but nearly all of them are reasons for concern. Our friend may, for some reason, be ignoring us. He may have lost his ability to communicate. He may even be dead!

Just look at what happens when there is any simple communication failure between two people (never mind a larger group). As a very simple example, take a sender (Person A) and a receiver (Person B). In an ideal situation, A sends a message to B; B then responds with another message acknowledging the receipt of the first message. This is, in fact, exactly how most digital communication works — Person B now has the required information, and Person A knows that it doesn’t need to be sent again. There are several different ways this communication could fail — A doesn’t send the message, B doesn’t listen to the message, B doesn’t send the acknowledgment, A doesn’t listen to the acknowledgment… but regardless of how it fails, there will be consequences ranging from inefficiency (if A feels the need to repeat his message over and over) to potential catastrophe (if B doesn’t have information that she needs).

Of course, human beings aren’t perfect. We’re forgetful. We’re “busy.” Our friends/neighbors/significant others/co-workers also have ways of visually checking that our lack of communication isn’t due to an untimely demise. Computers aren’t so privileged; when a neighbor stops communicating, our friend Mac has no choice but to phone its human operator. (”Hey, PC isn’t responding, and I’m getting a little worried. Somebody should go make sure that it hasn’t blue screened again…”) Conversations in the digital world generally involve more transmitted messages and a bit of extra information, but the upside is that both parties have all of the information all of the time. There’s no confusion about your co-worker’s status. Using the example of the last paragraph, what happens if Person B leaves town for a week and forgets to denote this in her voice mail? You can imagine Person A’s reaction… “Hey, Person B, did you get my message? Just checking, please call me back ASAP.” … “Person B, are you there? Is your phone broken? Have you forgotten about those TPS reports? I need them yesterday!” … “YOU’RE FIRED! Just kidding, Person B, I only wanted to get your attention since you’re so busy surfing dontasq.com again…”

Communicate. Listen. Enjoy life. Countless books have been written on various communication skills, but those books deal with subtleties like eye contact, body language, and e-mail etiquette. Before you can worry about any of those subtleties, you’ve got to take that first step and just do it! In my next article, I’ll touch on some of those finer points and aim to give you a whole new look at what goes on when people communicate on multiple levels. Until next time!