Mediation, Alienation,

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Mediation, Alienation, the Problem of
Existential Uncertainty

• Commhip100
• Guest Lecture Michael Cole
• January 10, 2006

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Blow Up Questions

• 1 point for putting your name on the piece of
  paper2 points What were the clowns doing at the
  beginning of the film?2 points How did the hero
  get the guitar at the end of the rock concert and
  what did he do with it?

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Why Three Comm 100 Courses?

• Communication as a Social Force
• Communication and Culture
• Communication Human Information Processing
  better known as cohi100)
• Why, after Comm20, are there three courses at the
  100 level as introductions to the upper division?

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Answer Depends Upon Defintion (Theory) of
Communication

• Theory 1 The transmission model
• The act of communicating transmission
• The art and technique of using words effectively
  to impart information or ideas
• Sender---? Receiver
• Hypodermic needle theory
• ALL are one way processes

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Definition/Theory 2Communication Putting in
common

• 2. Definition 2
• The exchange of thoughts, messages, or
  information, as by speech, signals, writing, or
  behavior.
• Interpersonal rapport.
• A TWO way process
• Question Can communication every achieve perfect
  communality, perfect knowing in common? If not,
  why not? If so, when and for how long?

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How do we achieve common understanding/communicati
on?
Indirectly, in a medium
Directly
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Culture/Medium/Mediation

• The literal meaning of mediation
• The opposite of Direct is Indirect
• A synonym of Direct is Immediate
• The opposite of Immediate is MEDIATED
• Therefore Direct experience immediate
  experience
• Indirect experiencemediated experience
• Therefore, to say that something the relation
  between two people is mediated is the same thing
  as saying that the relation is indirect.
• MediatedIndirectthrough a medium

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Implications of mediated experience

• 1. Very little of the information upon which we
  make decisions about how to act come from direct
  experience.
• 2. It is impossible to communicate everything
  about any experience. Therefore, information upon
  which we base our behavior is incomplete.
• 4. Even if person from whom we gain (mediated)
  information has our best interests at heart, they
  are not us.Therefore, it is, from our
  perspective, biased.
• 5. Thus, we are doomed to base our actions on
  information that that is incomplete and biased
  with respect to our self interest.

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This is the Problem of Existential Uncertainty

• We have incomplete knowledge of the world and we
  know it.
• That knowledge is not only partial, it is not
  selected for us in a way that is optimal to us as
  individuals.
• Consequently, we live with the knowledge that we
  do not know. We try to achieve knowledge through
  acquiring information
• Information (technically) reduction of
  uncertainty.
• Nothing is certain except. Death and taxes.
• So here is the central problem of communication
  from the perspective of individuals.

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The Three Sides of Communication as Putting in
Common

• Culture (Medium or the media)

Mediated Knowledge
Mediated Knowledge
Person
World
Direct knowledge
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The Three Sides of the Comm Curriculum
Culture
Individual/ Person
Social Force
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Thinking about Communication and the Person Some
Key Concepts

• Mediation Artifacts
• Forms of Representation (images, words.)
• Systems of mediation (montage, narrative,theme
  and variation
• Alienation and Coordination
• Meaning Interpretation
• Power and Control
• Perspective and granularity

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Communication and The Berman Chair of Language
and Communication

• This set of problems defines the issues addressed
  by the Berman chair of Language and
  Communication.
• The general perspective championed by Dr. Berman
  is called General Semantics which reminds us
  that the map is not the territory, the word is
  not the thing. We will examine these ideas
  continuously through the course.

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Juxtaposition

• The action of placing two or more things close
  together or side by side
• What is the psychological consequence of doing
  this?
• How does the psychological consequence depend
  upon what two images (things) are placed side by
  side?

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Example of Portmanteau Word

• Fuming
• Applied to foaming or seething water
• That fumes, angry, raging. Also, characterized by
  or exhibiting anger.
• Furious
• mad with anger, zeal, or the like raging,
  frantic
• Frumious perfect balance of fuming and furious
  like perfect balance of saddlebags, but not
  montage.

• Fuming combined with furious

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From Portmanteau to Montage

• Portmanteau- A case or bag for carrying clothing
  and other necessaries on horseback an oblong
  stiff leather case, which opens like a book, with
  hinges in the middle of the back.
• In the sense of that into which things are
  packed together originally applied by L.
  Carroll to a factitious word made up of the
  blended sounds of two distinct words and
  combining the meanings of both extended to
  things that are or suggest a combination of two
  different things of the same kind.

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Montage (OED)

• The process or technique of selecting, editing,
  and piecing together separate sections of film to
  form a continuous whole a sequence or picture
  resulting from such a process.
• The act or process of producing a composite
  picture by combining several different pictures
  or pictorial elements so that they blend with or
  into one another
• a mixture, blend, or medley of various elements
  a pastiche, miscellany
• NONE OF THESE DEFINITIONS FITS EISENSTEIN

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Three Parts of the Image

• Phylogenetic constraints
• Cultural/historical constraints
• Active resolving
• Imagination in Russian
• voobrazhenie
• Vo into
• Obrazimage
• Zhenie making

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Stabilized Images

• When images stabilized on the retina, visual
  field goes grey.
• Slight slippage produces partial image
• Full image reappears when there is free play of
  image across the retina
• Implication Discoordination with the world is
  constituitive of our perception of it.
• What goes on between interval of total
  coordination and maximal discoordination?

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Stabilizing images
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Newborn Gaze
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Newborn Fixations High Contrast Luminance Changes
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Newborn Face Processing(Phylogenetic
constraints
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When whole images fragment
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Three Parts of the Image- Again

• Phylogenetic constraints what infants see
• Cultural historical constraints (cell
  assemblies?). Result of millions of highly
  constrained actions through cultural medium
  (letters of the alphabet)
• These constraints are not sufficient. Need active
  resolving efforts off the organism. Into image
  making

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Opposite of Stabilized Image Sensory Isolation
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Granularity

• http//www.docm.mmu.ac.uk/STAFF/P.McKenna/RLO/pixe
  ls.htm
• http//zoomquilt2.madmindworx.com/zoomquilt2.swf