To read this content please select one of the options below:

Retuning the Global Theatre

Barrington Nevitt (Engineering Communication and Innovation Consultancy, Toronto, Canada)

Kybernetes

ISSN: 0368-492X

Article publication date: 1 June 1990

59

Abstract

The nature of communication between machines and people is contrasted and the power of words, concepts, and models as metaphors, both to help and to hinder thinking, is discussed. The article observes how every human artefact manifests its own grammar, rhetoric, and logic, and tends to resume the character of spoken natural language through electric speed‐up. It is emphasised that new acoustic‐space process patterns, created by the electric communication environment, are superseding old visual‐space ground rules of the mechanical world. The article then considers how to harmonise these conflicting, but complementary, “natural” orders by learning to anticipate the material, mental, and social effects of our artefacts as human communication media.

Keywords

Citation

Nevitt, B. (1990), "Retuning the Global Theatre", Kybernetes, Vol. 19 No. 6, pp. 42-53. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb005868

Publisher

:

MCB UP Ltd

Copyright © 1990, MCB UP Limited

Related articles