FEELING BLUE?

Blue! What do you think of when you hear blue? Royal blue? Baby blue? Electric blue? Majorelle blue? Maya blue? Powder blue? Navy blue? That’s a lot of blue, huh? And I didn’t even mention sky blue yet. Maybe you just thought of plain blue. The mind interprets all the information it gets to make meaning out of it. Therefore, different minds would interpret blue to mean the different shades of blue. In the same way, different minds interpret information in any number of ways.

I think that the misinterpretation of information is one of the biggest problems in communication. It was easier to deal with when most communication was face to face, but now with email, texting and social networking it is understandable that information can be interpreted by different people in different ways. Given that information now travels through the world wide web using all sorts of platforms, it reaches even the most remote areas of the world. It is critical when considering how information is digested and translated in to meaning when one acknowledges geography, language and culture. Suddenly blue is azul or samawati.

We communicate for different reasons. For two strangers sitting next to each other on a train, it could be to pass time. For a child, it could be to get some attention. For a young man wooing a lady, it could be a very useful skill. However, most of the time when we communicate it is to inform, or to pass a message, with a specific meaning assigned by the communicator. Depending on the context, the language, the vehicle used to deliver the information, that meaning may or may not be what was inteneded by the communicator.

According to The Transmission Model of Communication, “the transmissive model of communication reduces communication to a process of ‘transmitting information’ ”. With all the new forms of transmitting information we have now, I wouldn’t think this to be a bad thing. After all, don’t we want communication to be a transmission of information? Wouldn’t this reduce chances of misinterpretation of information? Words themselves are pretty basic in that you can look up their meaning in any dictionary. The shades of blue if you will, come in to play when one muddies the waters with all of the technologies we have available now at our disposal to use as vehicles for delivering this information.

If all information had specific meaning… leaving no room for interpretation and was taken at face value or the literal definitions of the words contained in the message, then communication would be the transmission of information. If blue was just blue!