Our Minds, One and Together
An essay on the importance of effective communication
In 1998, NASA launched the Mars Climate Orbiter which was designed to study the Martian climate and atmosphere. The mission ended in failure in September 23, 1999 when the spacecraft flew too close to the planet and disintegrated. The cause of the failure was due to miscommunication between the on-board software system supplied by NASA and the ground-based software designed by Lockheed-Martin. At the time NASA was using the agreed-upon metric system, which calculated the engine impulse data in newton-seconds, while Lockheed-Martin was using the Imperial system, which input the data in pound-seconds. The Mars orbiter cost 193 million dollars and was lost due to simple miscommunication.
If you didn’t get it from the story above, the lesson is simple. Effective communication is important and the ability to transmit ideas from one person to another helps progress society. Communication has taken many different forms. Some have taken to art, through the creation of sculptures and paintings, to convey complex ideas about human feelings and emotions. Just look at the painting Guernica in which Pablo Picasso attempts to convey suffering and loss because of war. The painting itself helped bring world-wide attention to the Spanish Civil War. However, communicating through the visual medium requires the imagination and interpretations can differ between viewers.

The most common way of communicating among humans is through words and language, both spoken and written. Thousands of books and essays, such as this one, have been written and published with the author’s intention for readers to read it and understand the underlying idea. But this method is inefficient at best. Meanings get lost in metaphors and symbols and, as in with the visual medium, everyone’s interpretation will be different. And this doesn’t even cover the many different human languages and meanings that can be lost in translation. As an example, try translating a song in Google Translate then retranslating it and see how much of it has changed.

Until we learn to “Vulcan mind-meld” or develop the technology to shove a flash drive into our heads, copy its contents, and download it into another person’s head, we must use whatever means we have to transmit ideas to each other without the loss of meaning. That is the essence of effective communication. Many successful writers and artists are masters of this art and is the reason why many works can last centuries after their authors’ deaths and still remain relevant. This skill is especially crucial for scientists, engineers, and academics who must constantly share their works and discoveries not only among themselves, but also to the greater public.
After twelve years of formal public education in five countries, which included six years of English, a year of French, Arabic, and German, classes in research, academic writing, and speech, I think that enough teachers have told me of the importance of effective communication and I don’t need another professor to convince me. But in my seventh semester in college, I am once again forced to take another communications class, despite having already been forced to take one in my first semester. Although I enjoy writing and would consider myself a fair writer, I don’t like sharing my work to the general public. The only reason why I have a Medium account is because my professor told me to create a blog and submit my assignments in them. And I want a good grade. This week’s assignment was to write about my expectations from this class and about the importance of communication. So what do I expect from this class? I expect to learn something different from my other classes about communication.
