Topical Guide 629
Mark Dorset
Communication: Signal and Noise
Where Do You Stop? Chapter 30:
“So?” she said. “About the way we smell things?”
“Oh.” The commercial had taken me by surprise. “Well, these molecules— You know what? It’s not just about that. It’s about the commercial, too.”
“What? This commercial? This stuff for dainty feminine hand-washables?”
“Not just this one. All of them. There’s a second where the show stops but the commercial hasn’t started yet. Less than a second. It’s a time when there’s just nothing, well not nothing but just the snow—”
Little Follies, “The Static of the Spheres”:
Eliza turned the radio on, and she began twisting the dial, exploring for signals. For much of the time while she explored, she was between stations, and the living room was full of the noises that lie between stations on a radio dial, noises that are drowned out when we come upon a strong signal. Some of those noises come from within the receiver itself, produced by the operation of the receiver’s circuits, noises from within the machine. Other noises come from outside the receiver. The sources of some of those are local, familiar, homely. These may, for example, be produced by the ignition systems of passing Studebakers or by the motor in a refrigerator or by a toaster. The sources of others, however, are distant, exotic, intriguing. These may, for example, be produced by stations too far away for a clear signal to reach us, stations calling from God knows where, with voices as weak as that of a boy calling against the wind. Or they may originate in electrical discharges from the sun, from other stars, other galaxies: the pervasive and indecipherable, eternal and inestimable noise, the static of the spheres.
See also:
Communication: Signal and Noise TG 67
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