Communication in a shared world
(Intersubjectivity – ARS)
Edwin Hutchins, Cognition_in_the_Wild
Communication
between persons who are copresent in a shared physical environment differs in
many ways from communication across a restricted bandwidth medium.
The meanings
of statements and questions are not given in the statements themselves but are
negotiated by the participants in the context of their understandings of the
activities underway . The participants use guesses about one another 's tasks to
resolve ambiguities in communication. Particular
meaningful interpretations for statements are simultaneously proposed and
presupposed by the courses of action that follow them . The evidence that each
participant has of successful communication is the flow of joint activity
itself.
Meanings can
only even be imagined to be in the messages when the environment about which
communication is performed is very stable and there are very strong constraints
on the expectations. In many endeavors, creating and maintaining the illusion
that meanings reside in messages requires that a great deal of effort be put into
controlling the environment in which communication takes place. Meanings seem
to be in the messages only when the structures with which the message must be
brought into coordination are already reliably in place and taken for granted .
The illusion of meaning in the message is a hard -won social and cultural accomplishment.
