The Responsive Chord. Tony Schwartz
transportation theory of communication is the basis of many formal models of communication as well as our everyday conception of “sending messages.” The way we use a postal service to send a letter comes very close to our commonplace analogy for all communication. We assume that communication is difficult to achieve, and that a message encounters resistance at each step along the way. This commonplace conception of communication is so basic to our thinking that we have used the new electronic media almost exclusively as message-sending devices. In my childhood, for example, the telephone was used as a surrogate for a telegram or letter, not as a new medium. If our family was planning to visit relatives in New Jersey, my mother would call long distance from New York to New Jersey to tell them when we expected to arrive. Her messages were short, loudly spoken, and to the point. She used the phone as a vehicle for sending a message across a space. Even when the line between New York and New Jersey was clear, she spoke louder than necessary—conscious of the space between them and using the phone as if it were a tunnel through a chasm. She believed that the phone, like a letter, was a low-efficiency vehicle for communicating, and she was pushing to get her message across. Today, my daughter often calls her friends to exchange giggles. They relate bits of news, giggle back and forth a few minutes, then say goodbye. My daughter accepts the telephone as a communication system with no resistance and no transformation. Communication for her is what happens when you use a telephone, not something that may occur if your message gets through.
Part of an ad for Seventeen magazine
Our misconception of communication as transportation interacts with another deep-rooted bias: the identification of print with “meaning.” Only a tiny fraction of all communication takes place through print (the U.S. national average for book purchases is 0.3 books per year, and this represents an all-time high in Western culture), yet it remains an idealized form of communicating the most important information: “I’ll believe that when I see it in writing.” More significant, print has helped foster a narrow conception of communication that accepts perceptual information as meaningful only to the extent that it conforms to the patterning inherent in print communication. One cannot approach a viable theory of communication until he exorcises the “spirit of print” that has controlled our terms for learning, understanding, and communicating.
The End of the Line
Print has dominated our non-face-to-face communications environment for the past five hundred years. During this period, the information most valued by Western societies was communicated in a fixed form, with words following one after another, left to right, on lines that proceeded down a page. All preserved knowledge, as well as those pieces of information that achieved high status throughout the society (e.g., laws) were recorded in print. The linear process, by which information was translated into print, took on a status unto itself. As a result, the linear process came to be valued in many areas of people’s lives. Our language, for example, shows a marked dependence on linearity in the terms we use for clear thinking and proper behavior. A child growing up in our culture is taught to “toe the line…keep in line…walk the straight and narrow…don’t make waves.” Similarly, he is told that a good student is one who “follows a clear line of thought.” And if someone really understands another person, we say he can “read him like a book.” Our logic has been the logic of print, where one idea follows another. “Circular reasoning” is synonymous with unacceptable logic. And we know that you never accomplish anything by “running around in circles.”
The linearity in our language is accompanied by a strong dependence on visual analogies to represent truth, knowledge, and understanding. Do you see what I mean? A really bright person—i.e. someone with hindsight, foresight, and insight—will see eye to eye with me. But a dull person, one who hasn’t seen the light, won’t agree with my point of view. Why, it’s as clear as ABC.
If seeing was believing, listening and speaking were undependable elements in the communication process. It was a common view that children should be seen and not heard. If you played it by ear, you were not very sure of yourself. And to be recognized as a trained musician, you had to be able to read a score and write notes on paper. In the courtroom, unreliable evidence, whether of a written or spoken variety, may be discarded on the grounds that it is “hearsay.” Similarly, a scholar could look back on history, and a prophet could see into the future; but if someone crudely imitated another performer, we said he was a weak echo or that he was mouthing something that had been done better. Even the early radio operators indicated that they were receiving a strong signal by saying, “Read you loud and clear.”
Even after we recognize the predominance of linear analogies in our language, it becomes important only when we understand that many non-linear patterns in our present communication structure are described and analyzed as linear patterns. Our linear bias also prevents us from understanding preliterate auditory cultures. Few readers of the passage in Genesis, “In the beginning was the Word,” recognize that it refers to a spoken word. Jesus said, “It is written but I say unto you” to assert a new world order based on his spoken words. Linearity and a strong visual orientation are not endemic to all cultures. A society that depends on auditory communication for the exchange of messages will organize their “world” in a very different way from our own. Space, time, the concept of self, etc., take on very different meanings when auditory patterns replace a linear, visual orientation.
You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round. In the old days when we were a strong and happy people, all our power came to us from the sacred hoop of the nation and so long as the hoop was unbroken the people flourished… . Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The Sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a bail and so are all the stars. The Wind, in its greatest power, whirls. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same, and both are round.
Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tipis were round like the nests of birds and these were always set in a circle, the nation’s hoop, a nest of many nests where the Great Spirit meant for us to hatch our children.
— Heháka Sápa (Black Elk)1
In many ways, we are today experiencing a return to an auditory-based communications environment. However, lacking the terms to describe this shift, as well as a perceptual orientation to recognize it, we often fail to understand what is happening. If one keeps his ears to the wall, he will begin to hear this new base echoed in the language of the young. Here, people in agreement are “on the same wavelength” or “on the same frequency.” A person learns by “getting around.” Someone who “plays it by ear” is open to new possibilities that may emerge in a situation. Truth is conveyed by “telling it like it is.” An individual who learns how to behave properly in a situation “tunes in on what’s happening.” And effective communication “strikes a responsive chord.”
Our social organization clearly reflects the shift from a predominantly linear to an acoustic base in communication structure. Lines are disintegrating all around us. The NBC Today show has a one-handed clock that indicates minutes past the hour.
Since the program is viewed simultaneously in different time zones, it makes sense to tell the audience, “It’s ten minutes past the hour” and assume that they know which hour, rather than to state, “It’s ten past eight in the Eastern Standard zone, ten past seven in the Central Standard zone,” etc. This sharing of information across time zones demonstrates how time lines have lost significance. Indeed, two western states have petitioned to change their time zone because they receive most television programming from stations in border states with a different time zone. Also, Congress is considering a redistricting of congressional zones to match media districts. Similarly, instantaneous information has reduced the need for datelines