Communion Of Dreams

A friend sent me a link to a CNET news item from last week about how a new ‘color alphabet’ was going to revolutionize communications. From the article:

Lee Freedman has waited a long time, but he thinks the moment is finally right to spring on the world the color alphabet he invented as a 19-year-old at Mardi Gras in 1972.

For 35 years, between stints as a doctor, a real estate agent and a pizza maker at the Woodstock concert in 1994, Freedman has been working on Kromofons–an innovative alphabet in which the 26 English letters are represented solely by individual colors–waiting for technology to catch up with him.

And now, thanks to the Internet, the ubiquity of color monitors, Microsoft Word plug-ins and his being able to launch a Kromofons-based e-mail system, Freedman thinks he is finally ready.

Well, maybe.

Science fiction authors have used various tricks at evolving language and written communications, one of the most memorable for me being Heinlein’s Speedtalk from the novella Gulf. And working in other senses is a common tactic, up to and including extra-sensory perception (such as telepathy). This is part of the way I use synesthesia in Communion of Dreams: as a method by which the human brain can layer meaning and information in new ways, expanding the potential for understanding the world. It is noteworthy that many synesthetes will associate colors with a given word or even letter - it may be possible that Lee Freedman drew upon such an experience to create his color alphabet.

(An aside - I have experienced mild episodes of synesthesia upon several occasions. Sometimes these episodes have been induced by drugs, sometimes by intense concentration, sometimes of their own accord. I think that this is a latent ability everyone has, but not something which we usually access, because it is poorly understood by the general populace.)

Anyway, while Kromofons or something similar is certainly possible in the context of computer display (of almost any variety, including nano-tech paint) , there are some real limitations that I can see. First off, you wouldn’t want to have to have a full set of color pencils/markers and keep changing them in order to just write something down in the ‘real world’. Printed material of whatever variety would also be subject to degradation from light-fading: some pigments fade more quickly than others, some inks are more frail than others, some colors react to different lighting conditions in different ways. (Those are all problems I’ve experienced as a book & document conservator, as well as owning a gallery of art.) Even in the world of computer display, variations in lighting and equipment could render some colors ‘untrue’. Not to mention problems experienced by people as they age and color perception skews, or from the small but real percentage of the population which suffers from one type or another of color blindness. Sure, a good AI or expert system would be able to ‘translate’ for people who had such limitations, in the context of augmented reality, but that tech isn’t currently available except in its very infancy.

So, while I enjoy a slightly-nutty idea as much as the next person, and can see some ways that Kromofons could be used for fun, I don’t really see the idea going too far.

Jim Downey