"They've been the cleverest communication team the use of social media, the manipulation of messaging," de Jesus explained.
The conference title, "The Clever Hans Phenomenon: Communication with Horses, Whales, Apes and People," referred to the story of Clever Hans, a famous European stallion, who could apparently solve mathematical problems and talk with his owner, a retired German schoolteacher named Wilhelm von Osten.
Called "The Clever Hans Phenomenon: Communication with Horses, Whales, Apes, and People," it was convened by the semiotician Thomas Sebeok, who invited a magician, the Amazing Randi, and an expert on the psychology of circus animals to make the point that animal-language studies involved an element of deception.
Presented by Shared Studios, this canny invention of communication by Yale law student Amar Bakshi disrupts the excesses of Facebook Theater and clever Twitter banter.
The alien communication system was clever, but it felt like starring in a less coherent re-make of Solaris.
What is different today, says Dr. Koonin, is that digital technologies — sensors, wireless communication, storage and clever software algorithms — are advancing so rapidly that it is becoming possible to see and measure activities in an urban environment as never before.
Henry added: "You can have a good product that's taken to market in a clever commercial way – where the communication positions it in a way that makes people interested and want to buy it.
Jamal Harewood's disturbing The Privileged plays one night only at Warwick Arts Centre as part of the Emerge festival, and you can catch Breach's Tank, a very clever show about language and communication, at the same venue on Thursday.
Twitter even manages to make people clever by forcing them to keep their communication down to 140 characters or less.
