Surprise!

I found this wedding dress made of candy. Which starting me thinking about how we use surprise for emphasis, like throwing a surprise party instead of just giving a gift. Even gifts are wrapped to make them more surprising.
Just for fun, I Googled ‘surprise and communication” and here are some of the results.
An attack on assumptions. provides some background for how this powerful communication tactic works. We are most surprised when we find out something is true when we thought for sure it wasn’t. As an attention getter you can’t beat surprise.
Surprise is also a mathematical formula known as computational surprise . And surprise, surprise, it’s going to be used in data mining. It’s interesting that surprises in business are almost always uniformly bad. and that employers still don't get it. There’s a city in Arizona called Surprise and a replica of Stonehenge in Box Butte County Nebraska - these folks seem really serious about surprise. A global index ranking access to information and communication does have a few surprises. A surprise property of the connected world. Is really no surprise, because we already knew that didn’t we?

Moral Panic.

The phrase was coined by Stanley Cohen Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics in the sixties. Dr. Sevigny’s lecture today was about manipulating a crowd or the public by means of moral panic. If this is what’s happening, if moral panic is actually planned by people in power for their own gain it’s thoroughly disgusting.
What do we really know about what happened on September 11, 2001? The latest internet documentary, Loose Change makes some very scary points about the whole mess. If you can’t sleep after watching it you can go to screw loose change for some rebuttals. Farhenheit 9/11 was pretty wild too when it first came out and dissenting views were available.
Just last week, the Military Commissions Act was passed allowing the US to torture prisoners and hold people without charging them. Although it’s easy to simply be relieved we don’t live in the U.S. and forget about it, I think we need to be aware of what’s happening next door. This act is step backwards for a civilized country.
Defending ourselves against moral panic means reasoning. It’s hard to get facts sometimes, especially if some powerful group has an interest in keeping them hidden. Where does it lead? Hopefully, we can dig out truth from the mountains of garbage out there and think hard enough to have an opinion. Personally, I don’t know what happened on 9/11. But I do know there’s more to the story than the official version. (Robert Cenedella, artist )

Tupac you rock the block

When I think of Tupac, I get a mixture of feelings. I’m happy that he left such a great legacy of music that just keeps coming. Tupac opened up the world of rap for me. I’m inspired by Tupac, because he was humble and he cared and that is truly rare. Yes, he made serious mistakes, but who hasn’t? He was still growing, as an artist, as a person, as an activist. I’m sad that the world lost what he could have become. Watch Resurrection if you get a chance, you’ll see for yourself that the Tupac phenomena is about class struggle and about talking about things that are usually kept quiet. Tupac was brutally honest about what it is to be poor in America. The mainstream media hated Tupac, (he is crucified by the media on his cd cover) because it was so easy to equate him simply with violence, crass lyrics and raw rage. I wish his story had a happier ending.
The Internet community is definitely keeping his memory alive, ten years after Tupac was shot. That alone says a lot about how communication has changed in this generation. (Interesting link between community and communication) All you Tupac fans out there let’s keep the love alive.
Write rap and rap right. Peace out.

Symbols-R-Us

Adler and Rodman (2006:15) state: “A symbol is an arbitrary sign used to represent things, people, events or relationships in a way that makes communication possible.”
So we interact with others using symbols. What a huge concept. What this means is that our culture, our lives, our very identities are immersed in and defined by symbols.
Trying to look at symbols in some kind of detached way is like a fish trying to study water. A Google search resulted in 116 million results including 6,810 articles in the news today. How can we distill some kind of essence from this massive subject and make a brief comment on symbols? The study of symbols is a whole field in itself. Looking at even just visual symbols would require a lifetime. The On-line encyclopedia of symbols is merely a sample of one type of symbol. What of the history of symbols? Science is tackling the subject as suggested by the relationship of symbols to Physics and Evolution . Social sciences such as Anthropology not only define culture as the process of a group relating symbolically but also study origins of symbols.. The complex relationship of religion and art to symbols is perhaps suggested by this image map of the Sistine Chapel. Personal body art is taking ownership of a symbol under your skin. Learning to read is decoding symbols.
It’s endless. Trying to discuss symbols is like a physician trying to dissect a living human or a physicist trying to observe a particle without affecting it. I guess to communicate is to use symbols, and not to communicate is to die.

References:
Adler and Rodman (2006) Oxford University Press, New York

Can you hear me now?

Dr. Sevigny’s first lecture talked about the importance of context in communication competence. Enjoying the concept of multiple presenting faces is something that I think derives from a creative relationship with one’s self.
As I move through the many challenging events of my life, I know what it takes to adjust my attitude and expectations to fit the context of the group to which I am fitting in. I use vastly different communication styles that allow me the freedom to blend in and achieve my goals in each of these social arenas. Inherent in being alone (all-one) is the awareness of this whole spectrum of my being.
I am aware of changing communication styles in my life as I navigate my multiple roles. Being a mother to two teenagers requires different communication skills than those I use as a student. As a waitress, the style changes again. As a landlord, my tenants see a different me and my business clients yet another.
The first hurdle in creative aloneness is loneliness, which is overcome by a solid grounding in the self, a love of learning, and progress in achieving goals that are personally exciting. It is especially important to monitor your intra-personal conversations. In order to access free and creative ways of being with others, you must allow and encourage flexibility in yourself. In other words, give yourself permission to be the many different facets of you on different occasions. It’s fun. Just look at how far Madonna takes it.

Sex as a Metaphor for Language

I like it. Surely sex has as many nuances, deep meanings and expressions as language does. You can potentially express anything with sex – from hatred to love, from submission to domination, from pain to pleasure, beauty to sorrow to ecstasy to insanity. Well, on the other hand, maybe you couldn’t write the constitution with it, but it surely has written the history of humanity.

Sex was our original language. Maybe it went like this: sex led to grooming, grooming led to ritualistic gestures and eventually meaningful sounds, and sounds led to language. So maybe language originally evolved to codify complex sexual concepts.

Sex can be considered a sacred language, in that it can lead directly to transcendence. Legally, certain sexual conversations are required for fulfillment of marital obligations. Economically, sex is a means of production or rather reproduction. In the business world, sexual conversations are implicit and submerged into the background, but the power and glamour of sex as a language is assumed into every transaction.

Sex as language is translatable – generally participants have no trouble understanding one another. Plus it requires attention, it’s hard to ignore, thus it involves everyone as meaningful communication must. Sex is generally memorable – allowing people to take up the conversation precisely where they left off. As a creative medium, sex is great. It’s fluid enough that sexual communicators can assign their own meanings to certain acts or aspects.

Yes, sex is humanity’s primeval language.

The Future of Work

It’s quite uncanny to read McLuhan’s 1964 statement:
“the electronic age seems to be abolishing the fragmented and specialist form of work called jobs and restoring us to the non-specialized and highly involved form of human dedication called roles.”
Roles are trickier than jobs…requiring more passion, more personality, more skills. This is fine for those of us sophisticated communicators who can easily adapt and configure ourselves to whatever performance is required. The ones I worry about are those who have not developed such an impressive rainbow of talents.
Forty years after McLuhan’s prophetic words, our federal government has researched career trends. They tell us the "Just in Time Workforce" is where all the action is. (As we increasingly must “network” our way into opportunities, I hope we retain the ability to value even those friendships that don’t have a potential cash value.)
You will be expected to drop into a company, perform a role, and get out. How the role is fulfilled will depend on the unique skill set you bring to the task. You will be highly involved in using all of your talents and abilities to deliver the maximum value to your employer in the shortest time possible.
In other words, the “Just in Time” workforce has their skill marrow sucked dry by the corporation and are quickly spit out. It just sounded so much more exciting when McLuhan said it.

References:
McLuhan, Marshall, Cybernetics and Human Culture (1964) MIT Press

Living the Information Age


I remember when our family bought our first colour TV. (This was a few years after watching Neil walk on the moon in black and white.) I can remember our first video game: Pong. It was so 70’s cool to be batting that little rectangle around the screen ...bloop….bloop-bloop. I remember seeing the room-sized mainframe computer displayed in the bank window at John and Main and being amazed. Then, twenty years later, I experienced the pride and nervous trepidation of buying my first 386.
In my lifetime, phones became mobile, music became ubiquitous, computers became necessary, and information came to be instantaneously flashed around the world.
. “…sudden extensions of communication are reflected in cultural disturbances.” (Innis:15) Now everyone is connected. There are 6 billion of us, twice as many as when I was born. The cultural shock waves are evident all around us. We are seeing the end of privacy, the end of cultures existing in isolation, and the end of many of our illusions. How are we coping with all these disturbances? Einstein summed it up: “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.”
Now the 21st century is here, with even faster rates of change. “Moore's Law equates to an average performance improvement in the industry as a whole of over 1% per week.” Wikpedia Are we headed for a Technological Singularity? This article: Quantum Communication Breakthrough is both scary and exciting, incomprehensibly pointing the way that lies ahead.

Reference:
Innis, Harold 1991 Minerva's Owl University of Toronto Press

Here's a list of Communications related websites I put together - hope other people find this useful!

Author's Websites - From the Readings
Bagdikian
Fairclough
Gerbner
Gillespie
Innis
Lasch
LeBonl
McLuhan
Pinker
Sharlet
Turing

Media and Education:
Candian Association of Media Education Organizations
Media Awareness Network
MediaWatch
Documentaries and short films - Canada

News
Newspapers in Canada by Province
Reuters
On this day in History
The Candian Press -Canada's Multimedia News Afency
Canadian Broadcast Corporation
National Film Board
Public Broadcast Corporation
CRTC
Canaidan Based Publications Online
Alternative Media Organizations
Freedom Forum
Free Press

Coomunications Research:
Communications Studies Journals
Stats canada Downloadable Publuications
Jesuit Communication Project
Industry Canada Radio and Telecommunications Links
A Sociological Tour Through Cyberspace
Topia - Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies - Links
Canadian instiutute of Strageic Studies
Research Links
Communications Policy Resources
History, Culture and Communications Links
Mediawatch Links
Canadian Journal of communications
Purdue University Journal Links
Science Journals
Association for Women in Communication
Canadian Women In Communications
McMaster Journal of Communication

Blogs:
Communications Blogs
Young PR Blogs

Technology:
Communications Technology Community
Internet Studies
Internet Studies Links - Queens
Paul Lutus Home Page

Business:
Forbes
Nobel Prize
Digital Works Copyright Info

Anthropology
Cultural Studies Associations,Centres, Programs and Journals
Anthropolgy Departments in canada
American Anthropoligical Association

Communication Programs:
Communication Studies - Canadian Universities
Communication Studies at McGill with Links
University of Calgary Communication and Culture
Concordia research Links
Concordia Communications Links
Schoarly Societies -Communication Studies UofW
Communication Studies Resource Links - Laurier
Communication Studies Links - Northwestern Ul
Weddles Communication Links
University of Wales Communications Search Engine
Gergetown University Links
hMcMaster eResources
U of North Carolina
U of Miami - Communication Studies Links

Careers in Communication Studies:
Job Outlook
hJobs for Communication Studies Grads
Careers in Communication Studies

Images:
Image sites

Communication Studies 1A03 Assignment 1:

Communication processes must be critically analyzed or we risk giving up the freedom to choose our actions. For example, we could lose the freedom to choose how our money is spent and thus become powerless.
Although we live in the “information age”, what good is information consisting of lies, myths, and innuendo presented as fact? Advertisers use pervasive symbols (images and language) expressly to manipulate our thoughts, and thus our behavior. Symbols are very effective tools used to evoke powerful emotional responses. In succumbing to the emotional state advertisers have designed, you are extremely vulnerable to manipulation. In this state you will easily confuse the difference between your “wants” and your “needs”.
http://www.arachnoid.com/lutusp/consumerangst.html
We need to ask: is what we think we think, what we really think? Or are we subtly or overtly conditioned to think that way, or possibly compliant in not even bothering to think? Norman Fairclough’s “Critical Discourse Analysis” is a tool which allows people to see coded messages and to understand who’s benefiting if the message succeeds. Defend yourself by becoming aware of the insidious and sometimes subliminal nature of advertising. To have a chance of negating the effects of the attempted brainwashing, identify the source, de-code the message, and determine if the information is really relevant. By becoming aware of your emotional responses (fears and desire) you’ll know when you’re taking emotional bait. Only armed with this awareness can you make informed, rational and free decisions about your subsequent actions.

Camille LaMarsh Student # 0569851