Transcript Communications Theory

Lecture 02: Communications Theory
IS246
Multimedia Information
Prof. Marc Davis
UC Berkeley SIMS
Monday and Wednesday 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Spring 2003
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/academics/courses/is246/s03/
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 1
Today’s Agenda
• Review of Last Time
• Why Study Communication Theory?
• Towards a New Understanding of
Communication
– Reddy on The Conduit Metaphor
– Iser on The Reading Process
– Barthes on “Author” and “Text”
– Discussion Questions
• Action Items for Next Time
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 2
Today’s Agenda
• Review of Last Time
• Why Study Communication Theory?
• Towards a New Understanding of
Communication
– Reddy on The Conduit Metaphor
– Iser on The Reading Process
– Barthes on “Author” and “Text”
– Discussion Questions
• Action Items for Next Time
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 3
Purchase Course Textbooks
• David Bordwell and
Kristin Thompson. Film
Art: An Introduction. 7th
Edition. McGraw Hill,
New York, 2004.
– Web Site
• http://highered.mcgrawhill.com/sites/00724845
51/information_center_
view0/
– Special Edition with
CD-ROM
• ISBN 0072975687
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 4
Course Textbooks
• W. Daniel Hillis. The
Pattern on the Stone: The
Simple Ideas That Make
Computers Work.
Perseus Books Group,
New York, 1999.
– Web Site
• http://www.perseusbook
sgroup.com/perseuscgi-bin/display/0-46502596-X
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 5
Goals of the Course
• Acquire theoretical and practical foundations to
analyze, design, and produce multimedia
information systems
– Media theory
– Media practice
– Current and future media systems and applications
• Learn to apply media theory to media design
• Gain further experience in project-based
learning and teamwork
• Develop an enduring framework and
methodology for media analysis and design
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 6
Course Overview
• Course phases
– Theoretical and practical foundations
– Current issues and methods
– The future of multimedia
• Course assignments
– Theory application
– Short media production
– Final project
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 7
The Media Problem
• Vastly more media will be produced
• Without ways to manage it (metadata
creation and use) we lose the advantages
of digital media
• Most current approaches are insufficient
are perhaps misguided
• Great opportunity for innovation and
invention
• Need interdisciplinary approaches to the
problem
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 8
Today’s Agenda
• Review of Last Time
• Why Study Communication Theory?
• Towards a New Understanding of
Communication
– Reddy on The Conduit Metaphor
– Iser on The Reading Process
– Barthes on “Author” and “Text”
– Discussion Questions
• Action Items for Next Time
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 9
Communication Theory
• Encompasses a vast array of disciplines
– Mass communications, literary and media
theory, rhetoric, sociology, psychology,
linguistics, law, cognitive science, information
science, engineering, etc.
• Questions
– What and how we communicate
– Why we communicate
– What happens when communication “works”
and when it doesn’t
– How to improve communication
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 10
Why Study Communication Theory?
• Our understanding of what, how, and why
we communicate informs our
– Theory of media and practice of media
production
– Analysis, design, and evaluation of
multimedia information system and
applications
– How we work together in teams
– How we read texts and talk with one another
in this course
– Law and public policy
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 11
Etymology of “Communication”
• Communication - c.1384, from O.Fr. communicacion,
from L. communicationem (nom. communicatio), from
communicare "to impart, share," lit. "to make common,"
from communis (see common).
• Common - 13c., from O.Fr. comun, from L. communis
"shared by all or many," from L. com- "together" + munia
"public duties," those related to munia "office." Alternate
etymology is that Fr. got it from P.Gmc. *gamainiz (cf.
O.E. gemæne), from PIE *kom-moini "shared by all,"
from base *moi-, *mei- "change, exchange."
• Remuneration - c.1400, from L. remunerationem, from
remunerari "to reward," from re- "back" + munerari "to
give," from munus (gen. muneris) "gift, office, duty."
Remunerative is from 1677.
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 12
What and How Do We Communicate?
• What “gifts” do we give each other?
• What do we do with these gifts?
• How does this gift exchange bring us
together (or not)?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 13
Today’s Agenda
• Review of Last Time
• Why Study Communication Theory?
• Towards a New Understanding of
Communication
– Reddy on The Conduit Metaphor
– Iser on The Reading Process
– Barthes on “Author” and “Text”
– Discussion Questions
• Action Items for Next Time
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 14
Beyond the Conduit Metaphor
• Reddy
– Identification of the Conduit Metaphor
– Suggestion of alternate Toolmakers’ Paradigm
• Iser
– The reading process as a primary example of
the Toolmakers’ Paradigm
– Phenomenology of the reading process
• Barthes
– New conceptions of “author” and “text”
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 15
Today’s Agenda
• Review of Last Time
• Why Study Communication Theory?
• Towards a New Understanding of
Communication
– Reddy on The Conduit Metaphor
– Iser on The Reading Process
– Barthes on “Author” and “Text”
– Discussion Questions
• Action Items for Next Time
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 16
Metaphor of/in Communication
•
•
•
•
•
•
It's hard to get that idea across to him.
I gave you that idea.
It's difficult to put my ideas into words.
The meaning is right there in the words.
His words carry little meaning.
That's not what I got out of what he said.
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 17
The Conduit Metaphor
• Language functions like a conduit, transferring
thoughts bodily from one person to another
• In writing and speaking, people insert their
thoughts or feelings in the words
• Words accomplish the transfer by containing the
thoughts or feelings and conveying them to
others
• In listening or reading, people extract the
thoughts and feelings once again from the words
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 18
Conduit Metaphor: Minor Frameworks
• Thoughts and feelings are ejected by speaking
or writing into an external “idea space”
• Thoughts and feelings are reified in this external
space, so they exist independent of any need for
living beings to think or feel them
• These reified thoughts and feelings may, or may
not, find their way back into the heads of living
humans
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 19
Toolmakers’ Paradigm
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 20
Comparing Models
• Conduit Metaphor
– Repertoire Members (i.e.,
perceptions, thoughts, or
feelings) can migrate from
one mind to another
– Communication is a largely
effort free act of unpacking
the meaning in words (i.e.,
the sender’s RMs in the
Signals)
– Communication does not
involve the RMs of the
receiver of the message
IS246 - FALL 2004
• Toolmakers Paradigm
– Only Signals can pass
between human beings,
not RMs
– Communication requires
active engagement of both
parties and often breaks
down and needs repair
– The meanings of signals
are not contained within
them, but made out of the
constructive interaction
between the signals and
the RMs of the receiver
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 21
Semantic Pathology
• Semantic Pathology
– “Whenever two or more incompatible senses
capable of figuring meaningfully in the same
context develop around the same name”
• Example
– “This text is confusing.”
• Text(1) = The layout/font of the text is confusing.
• Text(2) = The argument of the text is confusing.
• Question: Where is Text(2)?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 22
Today’s Agenda
• Review of Last Time
• Why Study Communication Theory?
• Towards a New Understanding of
Communication
– Reddy on The Conduit Metaphor
– Iser on The Reading Process
– Barthes on “Author” and “Text”
– Discussion Questions
• Action Items for Next Time
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 23
Phenomenology of Experience
• Computational model of time
– Linear, discrete model of time as series of
instants
• Phenomenology of time
– Anticipation of what will be
– Retrospection of what has been
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 24
Iser on the Literary Work
• Literary work has two poles
– Artistic
• Text created by the author
• Reddy’s signals – Text (1)
• Metaphor of “stars”
– Esthetic
• Realization accomplished by the reader
• Reddy’s Repertoire Members – Text (2)
• Metaphor of “constellations”
• Literary work comes to life in the interaction
between text and reader
– Virtual dimension
– Gaps
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 25
Iser on the Reading Process
• Phenomenology of reading process similar
to phenomenology of perception
– Anticipation
– Retrospection
– Gestalt
– Illusion-building/Illusion-breaking
• Interaction with repertoire (familiar)
• Alien associations (unfamiliar)
• Text(1) and Text(2)
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 26
Today’s Agenda
• Review of Last Time
• Why Study Communication Theory?
• Towards a New Understanding of
Communication
– Reddy on The Conduit Metaphor
– Iser on The Reading Process
– Barthes on “Author” and “Text”
– Discussion Questions
• Action Items for Next Time
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 27
Roland Barthes
• Death of the Author
– Who is the “I” that writes?
– The reader constructs the author by means of the text
• From Work to Text
– Method: “The text is experienced only in an activity of
production.”
– Plurality: “The text is plural.”
– Filiation: The author returns to his/her text as a guest
– Text is a social space which coincides only with a
practice of writing
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 28
Today’s Agenda
• Review of Last Time
• Why Study Communication Theory?
• Towards a New Understanding of
Communication
– Reddy on The Conduit Metaphor
– Iser on The Reading Process
– Barthes on “Author” and “Text”
– Discussion Questions
• Action Items for Next Time
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 29
Discussion Questions (Reddy)
• Reddy “The Conduit Metaphor” (Brooke
Maury)
– In Reddy’s ‘conduit metaphor,’ words are
envisioned as packages of information
transmitted from one person to another. The
role of the sender and receiver is mainly to
package and unpackage the ‘content’ of the
words they are sending and receiving. Is this
really a useful metaphor for human
communication?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 30
Discussion Questions (Reddy)
• Reddy “The Conduit Metaphor” (Brooke Maury)
– The toolmaker’s paradigm, wherein actors must ‘work’
hard and engage in ongoing negotiation to gain a
clearer understanding of ‘instructions’ they have
received, seems to better simulate the communication
process, and takes into account context and many of
the nuances of communication lacking in the conduit
analogy (as discussed below). Which analogy is a
closer approximation of the communication process?
Is the conduit metaphor a straw man, valuable only as
a means to illustrate the intricate semantics of
communication?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 31
Discussion Questions (Reddy)
• Reddy “The Conduit Metaphor” (Brooke Maury)
– The conduit metaphor seems to ignore or conflict with
the concept of ‘information feedback’ and Goffman’s
assertion that people (and animals) engage in
constant ‘impression management’ and
unintentionally give-off information about their
‘meaning’ that can shed light on their explicit ‘giving’
of information. Moreover, this metaphor suggests that
context has no role in communication. If all we are
doing as ‘receivers’ of information is unpacking words
to reveal their ‘content’ or meaning, then the fact that
the sender was crying or yelling when she sent the
words would have no value. Is the conduit metaphor
a gross over-simplification of the communication
process? Does is leave out critical details?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 32
Discussion Questions (Reddy)
• Reddy “The Conduit Metaphor” (Brooke Maury)
– Reddy illustrates his conduit metaphor by citing
several common phrases in the English language,
and his analysis of communication is heavily focused
on written texts (e.g. poems, books, etc.). Is the
conduit metaphor useful in studying communication in
other languages? What about languages in which the
written text is symbolic (i.e. Chinese, Japanese,
Heiroglyphics)? What about computer language and
communication? Is the conduit metaphor useful in
understanding face-to-face interaction, the visual
image or film?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 33
Discussion Questions (Reddy)
• Reddy “The Conduit Metaphor” (Brooke Maury)
– Reddy suggests that ‘we do not preserve ideas by building
libraries and recording voices. The only way to preserve culture
is to train people the rebuild it, to “regrow” it… within themselves’
(p.187). Yet a library often contains large amounts of feedback
and metadata about a specific piece of culture. For example a
library might contain an original work by Aristotle in the ‘original
text’ and translated texts, as well as an array of history books
describing Greece in Aristotle’s time, responses from Aristotle’s
peers and students, as well analyses from scholars of
philosophy. To put it simply, libraries may contain sufficient (if
‘impenetrable’) metadata about a particular element of culture to
achieve a certain degree of posterity. If there is enough
metadata about the ‘content’ being transmitted, is the problem of
the conduit metaphor solved?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 34
Discussion Questions (Reddy)
• Reddy “The Conduit Metaphor” (Prof.
Davis)
– How can an implicit theory of communication
affect our analysis and design of multimedia
information systems?
– What are some examples of multimedia
information systems that embody the Conduit
Metaphor or the Toolmakers’ Paradigm theory
of communication? How might they be
redesigned?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 35
Discussion Questions (Iser)
• Iser “The Reading Process” (Jeff Heer)
– What is phenomenology? What presuppositions
should we expect in this piece? (And are they met or
are they negated?)
– What does Iser mean by the following terms or
contrasts:
•
•
•
•
•
•
IS246 - FALL 2004
written / unwritten text
configurative meaning
illusion-forming / illusion-breaking
anticipation and retrospection
continual modification
evocation and subsequent negation of the familiar
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 36
Discussion Questions (Iser)
• Iser “The Reading Process” (Jeff Heer)
– What is a literary gestalt? How is it created?
Why the reliance on visual metaphor? (Is this
avoidable or inevitable?)
– Do what degree do we see the conduit
metaphor at work in Iser's writing, despite his
"recreationist" stance? What effect, if any,
does this have on his "message"?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 37
Discussion Questions (Iser)
• Iser “The Reading Process” (Jeff Heer)
– If through reading a reader constructs "a
reality different from his [her] own", what is the
nature and constituents of this construction?
(e.g. is it different from his own, yet
constructed from his own? an intellectual
bricolage?)
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 38
Discussion Questions (Iser)
• Iser “The Reading Process” (Jeff Heer)
– Is there an inherent value system at play here
with respect to conscious versus unconscious
recreative acts? (This has echoes of art
criticism, such as art vs. non-art, or the avantgarde vs. kitsch.) If so, should we challenge
that system?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 39
Discussion Questions (Barthes)
• Barthes “The Death of the Author”
(Rebecca Shapley)
– Describe the Author? What/who is said to be
dying?
– How does the concept of literature as an
author-free performance-in-the-moment,
perhaps captured in static form, translate to
other forms of art? Painting, movies, music?
Does this transfer support or complexify the
thesis of the essay?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 40
Discussion Questions (Barthes)
• Barthes “The Death of the Author”
(Rebecca Shapley)
– Do you know anyone or have you yourself
written a published work? If the role of Author
is not allowed, what role is left for the
person(s) who take the time to write, edit,
review, revise literary works? How do you feel
about that?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 41
Discussion Questions (Barthes)
• Barthes “The Death of the Author”
(Rebecca Shapley)
– If a particular person is good at generating
text or artwork that is said to be “good”, how
would we explain the repeated success, given
the perspective of the essay? That is, does
the death of the Author still provide for some
assessment of quality in literature? How?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 42
Discussion Questions (Barthes)
• Barthes “The Death of the Author” (Rebecca
Shapley)
– Building on Reddy’s comments about the importance
of people educated to interact meaningfully with
cultural objects (as opposed to simply storing them),
does the quality of a literary work change with the
readership? Take for example a book by Zora Neale
Hurston, a black woman whose work was obviously
not part of the white cannon of literature at the time
she wrote it. Since then, her work has been
appreciated and an enthusiastic readership has
developed; she is now considered an important writer.
Does Barthes’ essay imply that the quality of the work
has therefore changed? If so, what implications does
this have for information management?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 43
Discussion Questions (Barthes)
• Barthes “From Work to Text” (Sarah Ellinger)
– Barthes comments, “The reduction of reading to a
consumption is clearly responsible for the ‘boredom’
experienced by many in the face of the modern
(unreadable) text . . .To be bored means that one
cannot produce the text,” (163). But only one page
earlier he suggests that “The Text (if only by its
frequent ‘unreadability’) decants the work (the work
permitting) from its consumption and gathers it up as
play, activity, production, practice,” (162). When is a
work unreadable as a text? And how might that apply
to multimedia works?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 44
Discussion Questions (Barthes)
• Barthes “From Work to Text” (Sarah
Ellinger)
– Barthes claims that it is one of the “’social’
functions” of the Text to pose problems of
classification (157). What does that mean and
what are its implications for metadata and
organization? He also says that “The
metaphor of the text is that of the network.”
(161). What are some approaches to
organizing something best represented as a
network rather than a point? And should we
be aiming to organize the work or the Text?
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 45
Today’s Agenda
• Review of Last Time
• Why Study Communication Theory?
• Towards a New Understanding of
Communication
– Reddy on The Conduit Metaphor
– Iser on The Reading Process
– Barthes on “Author” and “Text”
– Discussion Questions
• Action Items for Next Time
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 46
Sign Up for Office Hours
• Wednesday, September 8
– 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm
• Tuesday, September 14
– 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
• 314 South Hall
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 47
Readings for Next Time
• Wednesday 09/08
– Ferdinand de Saussure “Course in General
Linguistics” (Gokce, Nick, Alison)
IS246 - FALL 2004
2004.09.01 - SLIDE 48