ELEMENTARY, DEAR WATSON. AH, NOT REALLY!

With Robert Downey's raucous re-inventioin of Sherlock Holmes, we have another hi-wire opportunity to discover that in our Age of Communication, we still can't communicate very well. Proof? Not the movie, the reviewers. They all saw the same film, yet obviously all experienced a very different one!

Now see here's the funny thing. In our 21st century we have more articulate critics with access to more studio facts, star interviews, Google data and Thesaurus' than ever before. And still they can never seem to report on the same movie. The critics aren't the disease, just the symptom. They -- all of us! -- simply have too many filters between any event and us.

For any print-audio-visual message to travel from sender to receiver it has to travel through a complexity of receiver filters. All the accumulated filters of race...gender...age...status...education...past highs and hurts. Come on face it -- you and I are no tabula rasa! We are the sum total of our past, of all the built-up layers of positive and negative feelings ever since childhood. So naturally receiver A isn't going to experience the same message as receiver B. Or C. Or any of the rest.

We've had Great Communicators in our history. Lincoln was one...Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin D. Roosevelt were too...just like JFK and Ronald Reagan... and yes Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and apparently Sarah Palin. But have any of these received reviews that were 100% in agreement...? Hell no; nor would we expect so. Why then expect it from anyone who's seen "Sherlock Holmes?" Or a gazillion other movies? plays? games? teams? marriages? children? laws? loves? well, you get the idea!

We are each hopelessly floating in an experience-bubble of our very own making. Can't be helped. Can't be penetrated. Senders -- from Robert Downey to General Patreaus -- can simply send what they have to send. If there are a million receivers, you better believe there will be a million ways of receiving that message.

That's just who we are. Maybe computers can do a better job. Trouble is, someday soon they probably will. Hmm, then what I wonder will we be here for...?