Friday, May 22, 2009

The medium is the message.

Evolutionary ecologist Elizabeth Derryberry, of Louisiana State University, found that over the last 30+ years white-crowned sparrows adjusted their songs to match the changes in the habitat:

...the birds' habitat had gone from being mostly grassy, with about 11% scrub, to 26% scrub. The slower modern songs would better penetrate the new scrubby habitat, which Derryberry attributes to reduced livestock grazing.
...
The birds reacted more strongly to recordings of modern songs than they did to old ones, with males moving toward the sound and females doing a little dance.

If birds can change their communications (payload) in response to environmental changes, then humans, which are supposed to be much smarter, must also behave in a somewhat similar fashion. Is there any evidence for that? I think so.
For example, relatively recent changes in our technological habitat caused massive changes in the way we communicate with each other, especially, where mating matters are concerned. While the birds adapted the tone of their songs to better penetrate scrub, people adapted their letters, e.g. from snail- to e-mail, to better penetrate the physical space. So, if today's private messages go through blogs, craigslist, facebook/linkedin, twitter, and etc., tomorrow's business communications will not only adapt to the very same environment, but also drive proliferation of such environment into enterprise infrastructure.

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