Something was missing that is for sure… when you said a photograph was supposed to be there: a dark room image enters and (joining Dr Bobomka? Who knows…) slides into a corner lurking in the shadows of the long conversation.
One day the world may thank you and I for continuing to struggle with these ‘Difficult Communications’. How come difficult? Researchers of what are called “socially situated interactions” commonly apply the difficult word to situations where one or other or several of those involved in a conversation are apparently or actually disadvantaged in one way or another. It could be that some or all of us are deaf or dumb. Or simply more like us trying to communicate with each other, it could be we are wrestling with the dumb technology of the blogosphere.
For shared understanding to take place, social representation theory researchers argue that these disadvantages make communications difficult and result in every speaker having to project meaning through more than their voice, and every listener having to reach share understanding through more than their ears. The deaf and dumb may use their hands to communicate, or writhe, grimace and mouth words. Then there is also the keyboard on which words can be written – like here. And images and drawings and so on. How porous all shared understanding becomes as meaning leaks across the boundaries of our physical bodies and minds, shared space, and those of culture and history!
Of course it is complex – and objects are more about interdependence than identity. Back to the deal about ‘Appiness. You are right, as an object there is more to it than money and sex, ‘tho both those also have the dynamic qualities to place us on the spectrum between the polar extremes of Happiness and Misery. That is where the cheeky-chappy ‘Appiness resides: somewhere in between, freeze dried from time to time as it were so we can catch a glimpse of ‘im, like in these periodic communications as well.
From the position of epistemic trust in the shadows the impartial Dr Bobomka gives a little cough. I am told that he has many influential continental friends… among whom:
Ivana Markova and for useful introduction on Dialogue and Dilaogicity (2013 Interview)
Serge Moscovici
&
Mikhail Bakhtin
“For a human being there is nothing more terrible than a lack of response” (MB)