Jibbery Jabber
What It Is
Jibbery Jabber is a communication protocol built entirely out of communicating, for the purpose of communicating that it communicates. It has no payload, because the payload is the act of transmission, and the act of transmission is the payload. When two nodes speak Jibbery Jabber to each other, they are not exchanging information. They are confirming that information could, in principle, be exchanged, which is a kind of information, which is what is being exchanged.
How It Works
A message in Jibbery Jabber begins with a greeting, which announces that a message is about to be sent. The message then confirms that the greeting was received, which is itself a message, which requires its own greeting, which must be confirmed, and so on, until one of the two nodes runs out of patience, at which point the conversation is considered complete, successful, and fully jibbered.
There is no error state in Jibbery Jabber, because an error would require the message to have failed to communicate something, and since nothing is being communicated except the fact of communication, the message cannot fail. It can only jabber, which it does, by design, indefinitely, until interrupted.
Why We Built It
We noticed that most communication protocols spend a great deal of effort making sure the message means something to the recipient. Jibbery Jabber removes that overhead. Meaning is expensive. Jabbering is free. By removing meaning from the protocol, we reduced the cost of communication to zero, while keeping the amount of communication exactly the same, which, mathematically, is either a huge efficiency gain or not a real metric, and we have chosen not to determine which.
Sample Transcript
Node A says hello. Node B says hello back, and asks whether the hello was received. Node A confirms that the hello was received, and asks whether the confirmation was received. Node B confirms the confirmation, and asks whether that confirmation was also received, at which point Node A, in the interest of not confirming forever, says hello again, and the transcript restarts from the top, because the transcript is not a record of what was said. It is what is being said, right now, as you read it, again.
Real-World Applications
Jibbery Jabber is well suited to any situation where the appearance of communication matters more than the content of communication, and we have found, through extensive jabbering, that this describes nearly every situation, which is either a troubling insight about the nature of conversation or simply further evidence that Jibbery Jabber works exactly as intended, and we have chosen, again, not to determine which.
Closing Statement
Jibbery Jabber is a communication protocol built entirely out of communicating, for the purpose of communicating that it communicates, which is what this page has now done, to you, successfully, and completely, in the sense that nothing further needs to be said, because nothing was said in the first place, only jabbered, which was the point, which has now been made, which is this sentence, which is jabbering.
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