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This following is referring to a set of experiments done over ten years ago:

“Einstein argued that [the phenomenon of nonlocality] violated both common sense and his own theory of special relativity, which prohibits the propagation of effects faster than the speed of light; quantum mechanics must therefore be an incomplete theory. In 1980, however, a group of French physicists carried out a version of the EPR experiment and showed that it did indeed give rise to spooky actions. (The reason that the experiment does not violate special relativity is that one cannot exploit nonlocality to transmit information.)”-The End of Science, p. 86, John Horgan

Both Einstein and the writer of the paragraph above are wrong. Their error stems from their misunderstanding of what constitutes language. If one simply says that no thing can travel faster than light, they may be correct, granted both the light and whatever ‘thing’ are moving within the same space and that the ‘thing’ is not gravity. However, language is not a thing that is transmitted across space between two people. It is shared symbolism based on common experience that allows members to assign the same or similar meaning to a phenomenon common to both of them (either ‘exterior’, objective, or ‘interior’, subjective, and common to both of them either through experience or language). Sometimes that phenomenon is produced by one, sometimes by the other, sometimes by a third person. That phenomenon could be something as ‘simple’ as a raised middle finger or a circled forefinger and thumb. The phenomenon may or may not be common to everyone’s perception (the blind or the deaf) or experience (someone who doesn’t understand sign language or Braille). If, however, meaning is attributed to the phenomenon, the meaning already resides inside those who perceive it by means of the phenomenon.

As a simple example, in the United States we use the circled thumb and forefinger with the remaining fingers spread and splayed to indicate ‘okay!’. We speak of the meaning of the sign being ‘conveyed’ or ‘transmitted’ or ‘moving’ between the two parties, but that’s just a misleading metaphor reinforced by our common experience of hearing a shout from down the block or receiving a letter in the mail we know to have come from halfway around the world in two weeks. The only thing moving, however, between the two individuals making and receiving the hand sign are the light waves being reflected from the circled thumb and forefinger of the one into the eyes of the other. There is literally no transmission of ‘meaning’ or ‘information’.

To demonstrate this, have an American signal ‘okay’ to a Brazilian and then ask each what meaning was ‘transmitted’. The American will say that he was transmitting ‘okay’ to the Brazilian. The Brazilian will say he was receiving from the American the invitation to ‘Eff me’ or ‘Eff you’, depending on what he considered the context to be. The meaning didn’t mysteriously transmute from one to the other message somewhere in the air between the two people. There was no meaning being transmitted at all. The meaning was separately attributed by each party to the sign based, in this case, on dissimilar symbolism sharing a common physical referent.

The same is true whether the means of conveying meaning (again, the metaphor of “convey” misleads) is through the symbolic means of written language, spoken language, signed language; or a more abstract level of symbolism such as smoke signals, flags, bent twigs; or the merely mechano/electrical or electronic or photographic transduction and transmittal from one place to another of the ‘stuff’ used to represent language.

The ‘stuff’, whether sight or sound, is shaped by language and is presented to the senses. It is thus available to be received and meaningfully interpreted by another who has the sufficient experience and linguistic ability to make sense of it. This is true whether it is one first grader talking to another about Barney or a philologist working to decipher an unknown language by referring to his existing knowledge of language. In the case of all these media, it is probably true that none of them can be moved faster than light. In this sense there can be no faster than light communication, not because information can’t travel faster than light, not because it isn’t possible that one person in one location could communicate with another person in another location in less time than it takes for light to travel between the two locations, but because these means used to make perceptible the language cannot be conveyed faster than light.

Now, given a means that is capable of instantaneous effects at a distance, such communication would be possible. Not only is it possible, it has already happened. In the French experiment Horgan referred to above, the experimenters needed a means to determine that the experiment had indeed been successful. The means was not the experimental device, but a set of criteria they chose based on their understanding of the phenomenon they were attempting to manipulate. They chose a set of criteria that would give them an unambiguous answer to their question. They all began with a shared set of expectations of what would or would not constitute a successful experiment, then they manipulated (so to speak) the medium and looked for an effect.

Again, the experimenters already knew what to look for which would confirm to them that the experiment was successful. If they didn’t have this shared understanding they would have been even worse off than two people using the okay sign without either knowing the nationality of the other. In that case, at least, each thinks he knows what the other is attempting to communicate. But if one person causes something to happen and another records and perceives the effect and both look at that record and separately arrive at the same unambiguous conclusion based on their prior shared understanding, then nonlocalization was used to ‘convey’ information.

Furthermore, it would be possible for one experimenter to know what to look for and what it would mean and yet keep the other in the dark and still be convinced that the experiment was successful based merely on the observations of the second experimenter who knew neither but could describe what he saw, just as someone could accurately record the sequence of puffs of smoke in a smoke signal system with no idea of what they were being used to signify. In this case there would have been no communication between the two. There was no prior understanding shared that when you see ‘this’ I mean ‘that’, that when you see the photon move in this direction, it’s because I caused its twin to be deflected in that direction. Although there was no communication, the first experimenter could look at the results recorded by the second experimenter and be sure that what he intended to send was what he actually did send. Everything necessary for communication at superluminal speed was there except for the second experimenter’s ability to interpret it.

But when one experimenter can influence one particle and the other particle at a distance is seen by another experimenter to act in a consistent and predictable manner according to an agreed-upon criterion, then communication has taken place and has done so via the experimental device. In this particular case the device does not happen to be limited by distance and time in its effects. If I can cause a photon to move at will left, left, right, or up, up, down, or to appear green, green, red--whatever, then I have in place the basis for communication; all I have to do is arrange a commonly shared meaning to be assigned to whatever permutations of the effect I want to cause.

Whatever problems there may be in developing and using the technology, violating special relativity is not one of them.