Communications as a discipline:
The study of how information (or knowledge) is produced, disseminated, used and
understood, and how this affects the way we live in the world: our relationship
to ourselves, to other people, to things, and to cultural institutions.
Communication affects our relationship to ourselves:
- intrapersonal communications.
- How do we define the self? Do we have a coherent model of the self?
Communication affects our relationship to other people:
- interpersonal communications.
- Skills include non-verbal communication, language, writimg, performing, art,
conflict resolution, negotiation & ethics.
Communication affects our relationship to things:
- How do things work?
- What is our knowledge of the impact of tehnology on culture?
- How does technology mediate our communications?
Communication affects our relationship to cultural institutions:
- What do sociology, anthropology, political science, history, literature,
art, and science contribute to our understanding of cultural institutions?
- How do we access (reliable) information?
What media do you use to discover yourself and the world?
- How is our access to information prohibited?
- How are our desires shaped by media and cultural products?
Definitions of the Self
What is the nature of the self?
See, among others:
- Freud, Jung, Reich, Erikson, Piaget, Lacan, Deleuze & Guattari
- Goffman: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
- Hakim Bey: anarchism, nomadism, Temporary Autonomous Zones
- Victor Turner: rites of passage, liminality
- Sherry Turkle: Life on the Screen
Communications Anthropology
- Edward Hall: The Hidden Dimension, The Silent Language
- Culture as a form of communication. Primary Message Systems:
- interaction
- association
- subsistence
- bisexuality
- territoriality
- temporality
- learning
- play
- defense: warfare, religion, medicine, law enforcement. The Art of War, Sun Tzu.
- exploitation: "In order to exploit the environment, all organisms adapt
their bodies to meet specialized environmental conditions" (Silent Language, 56).
Compare with McLuhan’s extensions.
- Non-verbal communication
- John Cage: Silence communicates.
- Edward Hall: Proxemics (the anthropology of space). The Hidden Dimension
- Edmund Carpenter: Eskimo Realities, They Became What They Beheld, Oh, What a Blow that Phantom Gave Me
- Wilson Duff: Images: Stone: B.C.
- Maya Deren: The Divine Horsemen
- Michael Taussig: Mimesis and Alterity; Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man
How Time Communicates
- Monochronic time emphasizes linearity, schedules, segmentation. Time as a commodity.
Invention of the mechanical clock to regulate the religious observances of
monks. The clock was as important in developing capitalism as the printing press.
- Polychronic time is relative. One does something until it is finished.
In polychronic cultures, schedules and segmentation of activities do not play a
major role.
- Compare with synchronous and asynchronous time.
- Paul Virilio has commented on the nature of speed, a function of time in
space, in contemporary culture.
- Joyce Nelson, in The Perfect Machine, points out that efficiency is
an engineering term that is often applied to human activities.
The Whorf-Sapir Hypothesis
Language guides perception. Language is not simply a way of repeating experience
but a way of defining experience for the speaker. The way we categorize nature
results not from the way nature presents itself to us, but from the way the mind
brings pre-conceived, language-based understanding to the perception of nature.
Phenomenology: the subjective nature of knowledge.
For example, in Kwakiutl grammar, the speaker is required to specify whether an
assertion is based on direct observation, hearsay, or a dream.
What does it mean when a gasoline drum is labeled "Empty"?
From Orality to Literacy to HTML
- Walter Ong: Orality & Literacy
- Harold Adams Innis: The Bias of Communications, Empire and Communications.
- Marshall McLuhan: The Gutenburg Galaxy, The Mechanical Bride,
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
- Noam Chomsky: Structural Linguistics, Manufacturing Consent
- Tony Schwartz: The Resonant Chord, Media: The Second God
- Neil Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death
- Sven Birkirts: The Gutenburg Elegies
- George Landow: Hypertext
- Netscape
Critical Approaches
- Structuralism: Steven Holtzman, Digital Mantras
- Structuralism: Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss, Chomsky, Kroker
Dialogism: Bakhtin
- Semiotics: the science of signs. Barthes, Mythologies.
- Post-structuralism: Foucault, Baudrillard, Ecco, Kristeva, Kroker
- Content analysis
- Reader response
- Constructivism
Developments in Science
- Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
- Chaos Theory
- Nanotechnology
- Bio-Engineering: Human Genome Project
- Neurophysiology: brain structure, memory, modularization,
theories of cognition.
- Artificial Intelligence
Developments in Technology
- non-verbal communication
- orality
- stone, papyrus, paper, e-mail
- writing, printing press, newspapers, magazines, hypertext
- from calculating machines to computers
- from analogue to digital
- photography, film, video, digital imaging
- audio recording
- radio
- telegraph, telephony, wireless
- twisted copper pair, cable, fiber-optic, satellite
- convergence
- regulation, censorship
Sites of Technological Impact
- on individuals
- relationships & sex
- the home
- leisure & sports
- the community
- education
- politics
- health care
- the arts
- business
- defense
- science
- popular culture
- global culture
- extra-terrestrial communication, UFOs
- concepts of spirituality
The Canadian Tradition
- Harold Adams Innis: political economist
- Marshall McLuhan: literary critic and media analyst
- George Grant: philosopher
- Edmund Carpenter: anthropologist and media critic
- Wilson Duff: anthropologist and curator
- Arthur & Marilouise Kroker: cultural theorists
- Bill Buxton: computer systems analyst
- Joyce Nelson: investigative journalist
- Bruce Powe: novelist and cultural critic
- Nelson Thall: media analyst (McLuhan Centre)
- Kim Veltman: media analyst (McLuhan Centre)
- Don Tapscott: economic and business theorist
Return to Media 113 Homepage
Revised 16 Sept. 1996 by M. Soules
