Communication inter alia LO8497

Rol Fessenden (76234.3636@CompuServe.COM)
15 Jul 96 11:05:23 EDT

Replying to LO8473 --

Michael says,

Sending and receiving as a rather old-fashioned and mechanistic view of
communication. It's a view that in my experience gets organisations into
all kinds of trouble.

A dialogue or a conversation occurs in (or emerges from) the interaction
of two or more people and the idea of sender and receiver is neither
technically accurate nor, in my opinion, a very powerful interpretation.

Nothing is communicated directly to another. All go through
interpretations processes of context, meaning, significance, content, etc.
Even apparently sensible speaking is frequently merely noise to its
intended recipient.

Until we begin to give up the mechanistic metaphor of sending and
receiving as the basic mode of communication, we aren't going to crack the
problems we keep confronting.

== End quote ==

I am really not intending to nit-pick on this, so apologies in advance.
In the electronic view of communications, receiving normally includes
decoding, filtering, and much other manipulation of a signal. Ditto on
the sending end. Encoding, filtering, and "other manipulation" [read this
to mean my knowledge is seriously out of date] occur before a signal is
sent. Aside from the lack of consistency in process, how does this differ
from what you are describing? Can you say more about what you are
describing?

I already understand that because of my personal history (born of my
culture, my upbringing, my genetic heritage, and any chemicals I may have
taken in), I may add a lot of meaning not originally intended, or not add
meaning that was originally intended. However, I do that -- or do not do
it -- within myself, do I not? Aren't I still functioning as a receiver
with all the decoding, filtering and so forth?

What is it about your viewpoint that adds value to our understanding of
communication? A lot of curiousity here.

-- 

Rol Fessenden LL Bean, Inc. 76234.3636@compuserve.com

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>