Walkie-Talkies 

Walkie-takies are basically “a two way portable radio”. The reason as to why my partner and I chose this is because it might be easier to explain to the heptapods since one way of communicating for them is “using sounds that the human tract can’t reproduce”. What is so interesting about how the walkie-talkie functions is that the heptapods don’t necessarily need to speak the human language in order for them to use it, they can simply making fluttering sounds to communicate. Walkie-talkies also don’t use wifi, instead it functions by using radio waves to communicate wirelessly.  This would come in handy and be easy to use and understand if the heptapods decided to take a few to their own home. Walkie-talkies also don’t have many functions so the heptapods would most likely understand if you just showed them how to use by actions and showing them which button to press. 

For my plaque, I decided to just include two humans on the opposite side with walkie talkie’s so it shows that there is distance in between them. In the middle I drew an arrow and then included the sound emoji since it further shows the distance and that there is sound traveling between the humans. Finally, I added the man speaking emoji showing that the man is producing sound which will thence transmitted through the walkie talkie for the woman to hear. The woman then has a ear emoji showing that she is listening.

In the beginning of the passage, Louise mentions how her first impression of the heptapod’s handwritten language is logographic, meaning simple emojis and images would allow them to understand what us humans are trying to convey. Therefore, my design is simple in terms of trying to explain how walkie-talkies work. I feel like if my design was more complicated or had a lot of “logos”, it would be harder for heptapods to understand since their eyes go all the way around their head which means they have no sense of direction. 

One thing  I had a hard time incorporating into my plaque was the limited distance since walkie-talkies only work a certain distance from eachother. Another challenging aspect of this is how I would be able to show more of the two way communication. Heptapods don’t read left to right and they jump around when reading so they may misunderstand the plaque. Additionally, a potential problem that came to mind was the radio waves since their radio waves on their planet may not be the same as ours. 

All in all, I do believe the heptapods would find the walkie-talkies interesting since it’s much easier to explain that to them then to explain how phones and other technologies function in our rapidly technological driven world.