Captain Allen discovered the talking drums of Africa, a way of relaying messages, in 1841. Around the same time F. B. Morse was developing Morse code. (19) African languages are tonal and are not do not correspond to a representational alphabet. The meaning of their verbal language is conveyed as much by tone (rising and falling of inflections etc.) as it is by distinct words (23). African drum language takes this to the extreme and conveys meaning in tone (24). In order to reduce confusion, extra phrases are added to each short word, (much like the NATO phonetic alphabet) (25-26). Verbosity aids contextualisation.The chapter sets up context and redundancy as key to understanding Gleick’s version of Information.
African drummer makes himself understood across long distances, not by banging the drums harder, but by expanding the verbosity of his discourse.
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