Thursday 12 September 2013

Essay outline for week 8 tutorial

For the essay due on the 20th of September I will be discussing the topic of communication and it's limitations. What and who communicates? Is it purely a human occurrence? I believe not,
it is universal. I decided to change the topic of my essay very suddenly as I believe I have more of an interest in delving into this topic and will enjoy writing about it in-depth more than the previous topic I had chosen. (That had been about Churn impacting new media industries).
Below is a brief look at the research I have been undertaking in preparation to write the essay.

Research QuestionWhat is communication? Do whales communicate? Do birds? Do atoms? Does DNA communicate? What would you suggest as the limits to communication? When does a failure of human communication occur?

Communication with humans and machines-
"Practically the goal is just a machine that, given some input, produces behaviour that i useful and appropriate to the situation at hand."
Source: Suchman, Lucy A. (1987). Plans and Situated Actions The Problem of Human Machine Communication. New York, United States of America: Cambridge University Press.

In the last decade alone it has become ever more obvious that human and computer communication has grown. Using various styles of coding (HTML code in particular), humans can create images, websites and even music with computers by inputting a command and as a result, having an outputted reaction to the command.

Basically an input of certain information and circumstances results with an output of information that is deemed “appropriate for the situation at hand.” The idea to create a machine that mirrors a human’s reaction of certain goings on around it from the input of information is one way that a computer can be interacted and communicated with by humans. Which, in modern day society is becoming ever more necessary. Communication with computers and through computers is an imperative and ultimately important factor of living in these times of technological advances. 




Human-to-human communication is sometimes complex, often there are many 'conversations' occurring at once even though there may be two people discussing one topic of interest.
An example of the different 'conversations' humans can have simultaneously with oneanother is through the use of select body-language. A person may be caught up in a situation that intimidates them and even though their words reflect the surface of the physical conversation being had with the other person, a glance at their eyes- that may be looking nervously from side to side, their arms that may be hugging themselves for protection..


"Even when only one person speaks at a time, other participants exchange information continuously among themselves an with the speaker throught gesture, gaze, posture and facial expressions. The transactional view of human communication shows an important dynamic between communicative behaviors where each person serves simultaneously as the speaker and listener. At the same time you send a message, you also receive messages."
Source: Morency, L. (2010). Modeling Human Communication Dynamics (Social Sciences). vol. 27, issue. 5. CA, USA: University of Southern California (USC).



Human and animal communication stems from the original domestication of animals. Having animals as pets also opens up the way we communicate every day wth animals.
When an animal is physically expressing an emotion, humans can recognise some simila traits of certain emotions because of the way we also express them. Shyness, fear and reaction to pain are easy enough to identify. Is it wrong to say that certain forms of communication between animals has little to no emotional factor? Animals feel emotions such as fear, so their communication should convey elements of those emotions.
So it should be said that animals can use different calls/ expressions to convey emotion. Monkeys, have been known to use facial expression to show different emotions

Further information can be gathered from this source:
Preuschoft, Signe. (2000). Primate Faces and Facial Expressions. Social Research. pp. 245-271. New School for Social Research, Graduate Faculty.

"the emotional content of a particular vocalization. We certainly have the impression that some alarm calls or grunts are more emotionally charged than others."
Source: Waal, Frans B.M. (2003). Animal Communication. Annals of The Ne York Academy of Sciences. vol. 1000, pp. 79-87.




Limits of human communication exist, communication is limited between animals, infant humans, elderly humans and even people we engage with on a daily basis. This can come from a lack of understanding the topic being discussed, not having the communication skills needed to understand what is going on o

"The infant and adult are participants in an affective communication system. A central hypothesis is that the operation of this system has a major influence on how well the infant accomplishes his or her goals, the emotions the infant experiences, and the infant's developmental outcome. If this hypothesis is correct, then the key issue is to understand how this system works. We need to explore the inextricable links among infant emotions and behavior, caretaker emotions and behavior, and the success, failure and reparation of interactive errors that the infant experiences when striving to accomplish his or her goals."

Source:
Tronick, Edward Z. (1989). Emotions and Emotional Communication In Infants. The American Psychologist. Vol. 44, issue. 2, pp. 112-119. Amherst, USA: University of Massachusetts.




(More to come on the issue of limitations of human communication)

I feel I may run out of space to write about each different topic to the length that I would like to. I have decided to write about each topic and then have a summarisation of the limitations of communication for each topic at the end of the essay.

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