Communication between people is not as simple as source, transmitter, channel, receiver, destination. The Shannon Weaver model may describe the workings of the physical tools we use to communicate, since it was invented to help engineers develop these things. But I don't think we are referring to the tools alone when we speak of electronic communications. The model does not take into account the meaning of the messages transmitted, it assumes that all communication follows certain structural paths, and that content is dropped in like a passenger and is irrelevant to the success of the transmission. This may be true of an email; whether you're talking politics or the sports has no bearing on whether the message will go through. But such differences do matter when we think about how the actual conversation itself will play out.
Example:
We have all lied or deceived at some point in our life. The act of lying is an instance of communication that requires much more than the 5 components of the model: the intentions of the speaker and the context of the lie are very important; if the speaker doesn't intend to deceive and doesn't think the listener is dumb enough to be deceived, then there is no lie...the question of whether the listener actually is dumb enough to be deceived complicates it even more. I think we would all agree that we don't just use words to mean what they mean: we lie, we insinuate, we joke, we tease, we promise, we preach. All these modes of communication require us to recognize that others can see our intentions when we speak, and that they can see we recognize this, and we can see that they can see... you get the idea. In addition to this, there are actual meanings to the words we use, there are conventions of language that we are obliged to follow (unlike postmodern art, words still have some meaning).
It seems to me the most interesting bits of communication occur when we intentionally exploit the differences between intentions and rules, and that, I think, is where us designers can do some interesting work. In creating digital media, we need to take these complexities into account, since electronic communication is still human communication after all, regardless of the tools employed. Our imprecision, creativity and complexity need to be accounted for in our designs if they are going to succeed.
Example:
We have all lied or deceived at some point in our life. The act of lying is an instance of communication that requires much more than the 5 components of the model: the intentions of the speaker and the context of the lie are very important; if the speaker doesn't intend to deceive and doesn't think the listener is dumb enough to be deceived, then there is no lie...the question of whether the listener actually is dumb enough to be deceived complicates it even more. I think we would all agree that we don't just use words to mean what they mean: we lie, we insinuate, we joke, we tease, we promise, we preach. All these modes of communication require us to recognize that others can see our intentions when we speak, and that they can see we recognize this, and we can see that they can see... you get the idea. In addition to this, there are actual meanings to the words we use, there are conventions of language that we are obliged to follow (unlike postmodern art, words still have some meaning).
It seems to me the most interesting bits of communication occur when we intentionally exploit the differences between intentions and rules, and that, I think, is where us designers can do some interesting work. In creating digital media, we need to take these complexities into account, since electronic communication is still human communication after all, regardless of the tools employed. Our imprecision, creativity and complexity need to be accounted for in our designs if they are going to succeed.
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