Organizational Technology :: Technologies of Communication

We live in an age of conversation. Communication is the problem and the opportunity addressed by a gravid deal of technology design and development. But because communication is an interpersonal and a affectionate phenomenon, technology issues must be approached with a particular appreciation of gentle and social factors. The organization of societies today requires effective global communication between diverse and far-flung social and cultural systems. Only through technical intermediation argon we able to maintain the flows of commerce and information required by the world-wide interdependence. Technologies of communication become the means of production, or production format, of communication. Their use in communication is not transparent. In fact, technologies introduce new contingencies and context into communication. Analysis of communication and interaction in society today needs to account for the transformative effects of mediation. Technologies are rational by design, and in use, they rationalize human activity. Human communication and interaction, however, are neither rational nor designed. The difference between the technical and the human shows up in technology at what we call the "interface." In our case, we will consider this not just a user interface, but a social interface. It is social because it translates communication (messages, content) while also facilitating the subtle and tacit exchange of interpersonal acknowledgments. The latter, though they dont "say" anything, reproduce our relations. Social interface issues generally involve ambiguities of communication, intent, resultant role and so on. These ambiguities result from technologys mediation of practices in which individuals are normally able to address and resolve ambiguities as they come up. Its at the social interface where the preeminence between communications content and participants relationships becomes an issue, because the technology thats good for tr ansmitting content may not be good for reproducing relationships. The implicit purpose of communication is to motivate a listener (or recipient) to do, or understand, something communicated. Thus the use of technology extends and limits the very power of communication. It extends our ability to access and connect, but limits our ability to communicate and bind. Repercussions can be seen at all levels of society, from individual and interpersonal to macro-social. Our study of communication technologies will borrow from pragmatics, which is branch of linguistics that emphasizes the "how" of what we say (in addition to the "what"). A pragmatics of mediated interaction would then emphasize the production and performance of mediated communication and interaction, focusing on the practices developed around connectivity technologies.