Visible and Invisible Bias via Media

Explores the relative powers of communication media and their programs to influence human thought and action in differing cultural contexts. Compares the telecommunication theory of transporting information through channels logically with human communication processes that transform their users eco-logically. Considers how metaphors and languages determine what is thinkable and unthinkable. Suggests perceptual rather than conceptual approaches for discovering the material, mental, and social effects of any medium whatever. Aphorisms, representing a knowledge broken, do invite men to inquire farther; whereas Methods, carrying the show of a total, do secure men, as if they were at farthest. Francis Bacon By increasing the speed, scope and accessibility of communication media, professional communicators have hitherto assumed that they could increase human understanding everywhere. But their technical prowess has already succeeded in creating an all-embracing environment of instant electric information that is actually decreasing both human tolerance and mutual understanding in every human society. Improved communication has resulted in a crisis of identity that demands both change and conformity at the same time. Our human intentions have been reversed via media. Electric information speedup is annihilating all former images that we had of ourselves; it is depriving us of both identities and goals: The UNPERSON is the inevitable result of improved communicat ion. When all bar r ie rs o f pr ivate consciousness are overcome, the resulting collective form of awarenessisa tribal dream ... The fragility andinsecurity of tribal life lead to violence as a quest for identity in preliterate and post-literate societies alike.' This is the communication paradox of the Second Industrial Revolution of electric information. Instead of re-enforcing and propagating what we had learned in the Age of Reason, we have recreated and magnified A New Age of Unreason: we have restored the occult arts and revived the tribal gods with new vigour, epitomized in North America by the Manson family and the Jones cult. We have converted moral Everyman into amoral Electronic-man. Today, YOU are there, and THEY are here instantly as discarnate mindsvia electric media. We have had the experience, but have we missed its meaning? The logically connected order of material hardware breaks down as the new ecologically related order of informationsoftware takes over. Why did we fail to anticipate this outcome? What measures can we take to defend ourselves from such consequences now and in future? Logic and Transporting Information Today's dominant communication theory developed by Bell System scientist Claude Shannon is a Transportation Theory of Communicarion that treats "software" (information and design) like "hardware" (the material embodiment of software). In Shannon's words: The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point. Frequently the messages have meaning; that is they refer to or are correlated according to some system with certain physical or conceptual entities. These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineeringproblem. The significant aspect is that the actual message is one selected from a ser of possible messages. The system must be designed for each possible selection, not just the one which will actually be chosen since this is unknown at the time of d e ~ i g n . ~ While Shannon developed a mathematical theory logically for matching outputs to inputs of telecommunication channels, his Bell System colleague Warren Weaver applied this theory analogically to "all the procedures by which one mind may affect another". Weaver assumed that Shannon's theory could be extended by statistical methods to match sense, if not to make sense, if any communication process whatever. Weaver's assumption has been generally accepted by the academic establishment, which has perpetuated and propagated the Shannon-Weaver paradigm, for it is in keeping with their ideal of achieving logical maturity. But, as Weaver also notes: The concept of information developed in this theory at first seems disappointing and bizarre-disappointing because it has nothing to do with meaning, and bizarre because it deals not with a single message but rather with the statistical character of a whole ensemble of messages, bizarre also because in thesestatistical termsthetwoterms information and uncertainty find themselves to be partners. In the Shannon-Weaver theory all information transmitted unintentionally is treated as "noise" interfering with intended signals or messages. This theory is not concerned with the transformation of noise into new kinds of information or new knowledge. For example, radio astronomy originated in the study of radio noise or "static". Shannon's theory is concerned with "closed" rather than "open" systems, that is, matching what is defined rather than making what is undefined. John R. Pierce, a colleague of both Shannon and Weaver, concludes that: It would be absurd to assert that informationtheory, ... has enabled us tosolve the problems of linguistics, of meaning, of understanding, of philosophy, of life.' Every radio operator knows how to signal...-...or MAYDAY to transmit the idea or concept of "distress", but not its feeling orpercept. On the other hand, a child's cry, like a poet's "exact word", can communicate distress to perceptive people. This is precisely where the Shannon-Weaver theory breaks down. Whereas the scientist and technologist strip natural language of its cultural heritage in attempting to confine one word to one meaning within their particular disciplines, the poet reverberates each word across his entire language and culture in order to enrich its meaning. Lawyer George H. Kendal explores these differing approaches towards establishing "facts" in law, science, and life.' No sense can operate in isolation, for each sense works through interplay with all the others. They constantly transform each other in the process of making sense through synesthesia as E.H. Gombrich .observes: What is called "synesthesia", the splashing over of one sense modality to another, is a fact to which all languages testify. They work both ways-from sight to sound and from sound to sight. We speak of loud colours or bright sounds and everyone knows what we mean. Nor are theear and the eye the only senses that are thus converging in a common centre. There is touch in such terms as a "velvety voice" and "a cold light", taste with "sweet harmonies" of colours or sounds, and so on through countless permutations.' In contrast to the "exact definition" of the scientist is the "exact word"-le mot juste-of the poet. Richard Aldington explains: The exact word does not mean the word which exactly describes the object itself. It means the exact word which brings the effect of the word before the reader as it presented itselfto the poet's mindat thetimeofwritingthe poem. (my italic^)^ The artist starts with a desired effect and learns to create its cause with his chosen medium and audience. By contrast, the scientist looks for the effects to fit (or not to fit) his chosen theory. The scientist is concerned with defining concepts to clarify his theories, while the artist is dedicated tosharpening the perception ofhis audience in order to share unique human experience. Perception is a relation among relations apprehended in our sensory lives. It is a process of analogically relating rather than logically connecting. Different communication media create differing sensory relations in audiences of differing "mental set" (not merely ideological, butpsychic bias) and differing cultural traditions (literate and non-literate). Percepts are the sensory data of human experience due to direct encounter with present existence. Percepts are the raw material of Art. Concepts are convenient software tools abstracted from repeated percepts of past experience. Concepts are the raw material of Science. Percepts cannot be reduced to concepts, for classification automatically converts what is new or unique into hindsight. As poet Samuel T. Coleridge remarked, "To most men, experience is like the stern lights of a ship which illumines only the track it has passed." Jokes are precepts; they cannot be explained by reducing them to concepts without destroying their humour. Like humourists, artists and inventors constantly juxtapose ordinary things in extraordinary ways to intensify awareness or to achieve fresh vision. They no only create new archetypes out of old cliches in the process of hendiadys (Greek: one by means of two), they also infuse old forms with new vigour. As symbolist poet Stephane Mallarmkrecognized: "To define is to kill/To suggest is to create." At the beginning ofour century, Ernest Fenollosa, a lifelong student of Japanese and Chinese art, describes the contrast between Occidental and Oriental definition^".^ For example, if you ask an educated European what "red" is, he will explain that it is a "colour". If you ask him what a colour is, he will explain that it is a division ofthe spectrum of light, or a vibration ofenergy ofsome kind. Andifyouask him what that is, he will continue his explanation until he arrives at some modality of being or non-being which nobody understands. In contrast to this method of abstraction for philosophicdiscussion is the method of poetry and the Chinese ideograph. If you ask an educated Chinese what "red" is, he puts together the abbreviated representations of ROSE, CHERRY, IRON RUST, FLAMINGO in an ideogram. The "meaning" of "red" is manifested by what everybody knows. The Chinese "explanation" makes sense, like poetry, by reverberating acrow the entire language and culture. While Ernest Fenollosa was studying in Japan, Gilbert Chesterton was explaining in England that: Much of our modem difficulty, in religion and