Human ACK

2021-02-23 hacking-humans humanity

An important life lesson for human interactions, brought to you by the world of computer communication:

  • in TCP communication there’s the ACK flag
  • in microservice architectures there is backpressure
  • in network calls there is the exponential backoff algorithm

Participants who ignore these feedback cycles may broadcast tons of info, but not much if any of it is ever received. Even in one-way communications like television and radio, there is feedback through ratings.

People who broadcast without listening for ACK flags coming back are like unsolicited direct marketers: most of what they send ends up in the spam folder or recycling bin.