Mandelbrot! Mandelbrot! Mandelbrot!

In case you missed the reference, I was thinking of the Seinfeld episode entitled "The English Patient" where Jerry has to deal with the highly competitive 80-year-old fitness trainer and weightlifter Izzy Mandelbaum, and his son and father, and in particular the scene where three of them are lying in hospital beds, having had their backs go out on them, and they start chanting, Mandelbaum!  Mandelbaum!  Mandelbaum!  You can see the scene over on YouTube, I'd embed it but it's been disabled, so you just have to click here,  It's an edited compilation of all of the Mandelbaum scenes (the character being played by Lloyd Bridges), and the chant comes in around 3:50 into the video, and again around 6:10 in an excerpt from the episode entitled "The Blood."  It's not much, but somehow that chant stuck in my memory...

And based on his accomplishments alone,  I do believe a group chant of Mandelbrot!  Mandelbrot!  Mandelbrot! would be in order,  but all the more so based on his TED talk, which I recently screened for the first time in my Introduction to New Media class at Fordham University, and what a marvelous presentation it is.  Not only did it illustrate and explain concepts I had just gone over in discussing chaos and complexity (and fractals), but Mandelbrot himself was absolutely charming and endearing!  Here's what it says on the TED site:

At TED2010, mathematics legend Benoit Mandelbrot develops a theme he first discussed at TED in 1984 -- the extreme complexity of roughness, and the way that fractal math can find order within patterns that seem unknowably complicated. 

You can find the full transcript of the talk over on the TED page:  Benoit Mandelbrot: Fractals and the art of roughness.  And there's a short bio that reads

Benoit Mandelbrot is the pioneer of fractals, a broad and powerful tool in the study of many forms of roughness, in nature and in humanity's works -- including even art.

A link to a separate profile page reveals the following:

Studying complex dynamics in the 1970s, Benoit Mandelbrot had a key insight about a particular set of mathematical objects: that these self-similar structures with infinitely repeating complexities were not just curiosities, as they'd been considered since the turn of the century, but were in fact a key to explaining non-smooth objects and complex data sets -- which make up, let's face it, quite a lot of the world. Mandelbrot coined the term "fractal" to describe these objects, and set about sharing his insight with the world.

The Mandelbrot set (expressed as z² + c) was named in Mandelbrot's honor by Adrien Douady and John H. Hubbard. Its boundary can be magnified infinitely and yet remain magnificently complicated, and its elegant shape made it a poster child for the popular understanding of fractals. Led by Mandelbrot's enthusiastic work, fractal math has brought new insight to the study of pretty much everything, from the behavior of stocks to the distribution of stars in the universe.

And there is a link for Professor Mandelbrot's home page at Yale University.

Anyway, here is the man himself:






To sum it all up, Mandelbrot shows us that order can emerge out of chaos, and that enormous complexity can be generated on the basis of a very simple rule or procedure, as it is repeated and reiterated over and over again.  That itself is the simply point behind the complexity of fractal mathematics, and the natural world that it corresponds to.

Self-Reflexive Bjork

Not that I'm a big fan or anything, but Bjork does make some creative and intriguing videos, and here is one that a friend brought to my attention, one that wonderfully illustrates the Principle of Self-Reflexiveness, the third of Alfred Korzybski's Non-Aristotelian Principles of Thought.

Self-reflexiveness refers to the fact that symbols do not necessarily represent actual phenomena or "things" in reality, but can also refer to themselves, or more generally to other symbols.  That is, we can have symbols that stand for things, but also symbols that represent other symbols, and then symbols that represent symbols that represent symbols, and so on, ad infinitum, at least in theory or as long as patience holds out.

In mathematics, we can say let x=y, then let y=z, then let z=a and let a=b and, well, you get the idea.

I can make a statement about reality.  I can make a statement about a statement.  I can make a statement about a statement about a statement, etc.

I can ask a question.  I can ask a question about a question.  I can ask a question about a question about a question, etc.

We have maps of territories, but can also make maps of maps, and maps of maps of maps, and so on.  And a truly accurate map of a territory, if it were situated within that territory, would include a map of itself, and that map would also have to have a map of itself, and so on and so on and so on.

Self-reflexiveness underscores the capacity of symbolic representation to take us farther and farther away from reality.  And it is the source of many a paradox, which is what the Theory of Logical Types put forth by Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead (important influences on Korzybski) sought to solve (see the Wikipedia article on type theory).  But rather than get tied up in paralogisms, let's check out the video:

The book that writes itself, isn't that a blog?  Well, some aggregators or feed readers actually are books or periodicals that write themselves, or at least edit themselves, sometimes aggravatingly so, as they may appear to be stealing content from other sites.

But self-reflexiveness is very much a part of communication and mediation in general.  We can talk about talking, give a speech about giving a speech, write a book about writing a book.  There are books that are nothing more than bibliographies, and there are bibliographies of those bibliographies, and I recall the great historian of printing, Elizabeth Eisenstein stating that this actually goes up a number of levels.

There have been movies about making movies, and anytime you see a character going to the movies, watching a film on TV, making a reference to a movie, or anytime we're shown a move marquee, poster, etc., that's a form of self-reflexiveness.  The same goes for TV (remember how Seinfeld, the "show about nothing," had a show within the show?), and other media.

Self-reflexiveness is a theme that comes up in literature, film, and media, and is especially characteristic of postmodernist style.  It's effect then tends to be ironic, breaking the frame and illusion of realism, waking us up, at least in theory, to the fact that we're reading or listening or looking at a representation (shades of Bertolt Brecht!).  In this sense, self-reflexiveness is indeed non-Aristotelian.

For Paul Watzlawick, self-reflexiveness puts us on the relationship level rather than the content level, it's about metacommunication rather than communication, pointing to the lower level and providing us with a context for making sense out of messages.  

Doublas Hofstadter calls self-reflexiveness recursion, and sees it as the basis of consciousness, the mind as a map within the map, and thinks that this could possibly be the basis of artificial intelligence and consciousness.

But for Bjork, and for a film like Being John Malkovich (1999, directed by Spike Jonze), self-reflexiveness is about creativity, about creation, about art, and most of all, about ourselves.

The Word and the Nonverbal

It's been over 35 years since I took my first, introductory course on Communication, taught by Jack Barwind, in the first semester of my freshman year at Cornell University (and all the rest, you might say, is history, after a fashion).  That course introduced me to many key ideas and theorists, including general semantics, general systems theory, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, cognitive dissonance theory, Aristotle's rhetoric, Paul Watzlawick, Daniel Boorstin, Marshall McLuhan, Harold Innis, Jacques Ellul, and much more.

One of the topics covered was nonverbal communication, and it was then that I was first introduced to the "fact" that 93% of all communication is nonverbal.  I put "fact" in quotation marks in this instance because that particular fact is in dispute, and that dispute is the subject of this blog.  But in fact, all facts are at best tentative, and technically are not necessarily true--a statement of fact is a descriptive statement (also known as a proposition) that is subject to verification or refutation.  If it's specific, for example if I say it is raining at Fordham University's Rose Hill campus in the Bronx right now (say, 10 AM on February 18, 2010), it's possible to check it out and determine whether the statement is true.  If it's general, for example, if I say that whenever dark clouds gather, rain will follow, we are incapable of checking every possible instance that fits the generalization, past, present, and future, and so we can never prove it true, but according to Karl Popper we can prove it false by finding just one example that doesn't fit (although even that possibility is subject to falsification).

The facts about facts is one of the topics covered in general semantics, and it's also the case that in general semantics the term nonverbal is often used to refer to perception, what we abstract out of events in spacetime (aka reality) through our senses, before applying verbal names to our perceptions and categorizing them with labels.  This usage goes back to a time before the concept of nonverbal communication became commonplace (some at first wrote it as non-verbal).

But in the field of communication, drawing on behavioral studies from researchers trained in psychology, nonverbal communication has been established as an area of study since the 60s.  Defined negatively, by what it is not rather than what it is, nonverbal communication refers to all forms of communicative behavior except for our words.  Nonverbal communication is typically divided into a number of subfields, including

• Kinesics (more popularly known as body language, although calling it a "language" is considered a misnomer, this is all about body movements, including gestures, posture, facial expressions, and eye gaze)

• Haptics (the use of touch)

• Proxemics (the use of space, including the distances between us, use of furniture, interior design, architecture, even city planning)

• Chronemics (the use of time)

• Paralanguage (tone of voice and other vocal characteristics and sounds that we make other than our words)

• Object language (it includes clothing, even hairstyle, and any physical object whose display or use communicates something, such as a wedding ring, or a fancy car used as a status symbol)

This list could be expanded, and the territory could be, and has been, divided up in different ways, but this is the way I used to present it when I taught introductory communication classes, and my goal here is to simply provide a sense of the kinds of phenomena that are covered under this heading. 

I should note that apart from studying these aspects of nonverbal communication separately, they can and have been studied in combination with each other, and in their interaction with verbal communication.  One of the practical applications of nonverbal communication is in the detection of deception, lying in other words, and the expert in the field, who I recall hearing about back in my freshman year, is Paul Ekman.  I highly recommend his book Telling Lies.  And if you've seen, or heard of the Fox network TV show Lie to Me, the lead character, Cal Lightman, is based on Professor Ekman.

One of the pioneers in nonverbal communication, and intercultural communication, Edward T. Hall, is considered foundational in the field of media ecology, his fellow anthropologist, Ray Birdwhistell, was also on the original media ecology reading list.  Both are considered part of the Palo Alto Group, a loose coalition of scholars associated with Gregory Bateson, following up on the groundbreaking work of Norbert Wiener (who coined the term cybernetics), which also included Paul Watzlawick, and Erving Goffman.  I previously posted a tribute to Hall, who passed away last summer (see Hall of Fame)--Hall coined the term proxemics, and while he didn't coin the corresponding term chronemics, he pioneered the study of the human use of time as well as space.  Birdwhistell coined the term kinesics.  Ekman's work, I should add, was also recommended for anyone interested in this area back when Neil Postman and his colleagues had their media ecology doctoral program, and I continue to recommend him to this day.

Another pioneer in nonverbal research who figured prominently in the field of communication (but not in media ecology) is Albert Mehrabian.  And certainly one of his claims to fame is the fact that most textbook discussions of nonverbal communication begin with the fact that 93% of all communication is nonverbal, a fact that I remember from my freshman communication class, a fact that originates with research conduced by Mehrabian. 

So, now, this past summer, there was a video that came to my attention, circulated by some of the public relations people I'm in touch with on Twitter and other social media, that claims to bust the Mehrabian myth.  And I've been meaning to put up a post about it, so here it is:

Now, I have no problem with the point that these folks at CreativityWorks, which apparently consists of two British communication professionals, Martin Shovel and Martha Leyton, are making.  I've seen more than enough presentations by folks, including communication scholars, who seem to think that a snazzy PowerPoint presentation is more important than any content that they have to present, or that it can mask their apparent lack of content.  

But I do find the video overly dramatic, in that I never felt that the "Mehrabian myth" really dominated people's thinking all that much.  It just struck me as a way to make the point that nonverbal communication plays an important role in interaction, and that something that we tend not to pay attention to at all is in fact something that we ought to pay some attention to.  As an undergraduate, I didn't think much of the 93% figure one way or another, except insofar as it might be the answer to a question on a test.  As a graduate student and professor, I treated it as a metaphor, a way of saying that "a lot" of our communication is nonverbal, noting that the use of a statistic was an example of scientism, trying to sound scientific in order to make the claim more persuasive than it would otherwise be.  

I mean, how can you measure how much communication occurs in any given situation.  Sure, you can set up operational definitions and conduct research, but communication is, in my view, a qualitative phenomenon that cannot be quantified.  And that is even more true for meaning, whatever I. A. Richards's well intentioned efforts to apply scientific method to literary study in the early 20th century.  I just never took the figure of 93% seriously, and I'm surprised that anyone else did, although I guess I shouldn't be.

A related analogy is that of the tip of the iceberg, the point being that the communication that we are aware of is just the tip of the iceberg, the majority of our communication going on below the level of our awareness.  The point being made is that human communication is subtle and pervasive, understanding communication is not obvious, even though we engage in communication constantly, and that's why we need to study the topic.  A further analogy could be made to the psychoanalytic notion of the unconscious mind, which nonverbal communication is largely analogous to.  You might say that 93% of mental activity is unconscious, and that would be consistent with a Freudian view, and perhaps also line up fairly well with research in neuroscience.  And again, the point really is that we are unconscious in regard to the much of our communication behavior, and we could become aware of more of it than we otherwise are.


In any event, as a graduate student I also eventually learned that, while the scientistic "fact" of 93% was generally accepted by communication theorists, whose social/behavioral science approach dominated the northeast region of the United States, which is where I did all of my studies, scholars in the related area of rhetorical criticism, who were strongest in the south and midwest, objected vehemently to the inclusion of nonverbal behavior under the heading of communication.  Coming from a tradition of speech and rhetoric, they believed that words were the only true concern for our field, that other forms of behavior should be left to the psychologists, that nonverbal expression typically occurred without conscious purpose and therefore was not part of their humanistic focus.  I found this line of thinking quite interesting, even if I did not agree with it.


The significance of nonverbal communication, though, would be in its role as metacommunication, to use Watzlawick's term, communication about communication, communication that tells us how to interpret the content (which is mostly verbal) and also establishes and maintains how we relate to one another.  The same words mean very different things if my tone of voice and facial expression indicate that I am angry, or sad, or calm, or sarcastic, or asking a question as opposed to making an authoritative statement.  

Essentially, it is difficult if not impossible to establish effective communication unless we first establish some kind of relationship, and at least have an intuitive understanding of its nature.  On a somewhat different but related note, if you want to see if a television comedian is really funny or not, turn off the sound.  If you watch, say, Seinfeld that way, you can see how the facial expressions, gestures, and actions of Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer are still extremely humorous.  This also accounts for the great success that Monty Python's Flying Circus enjoyed in the United States.  American viewers of the British sketch show did not get any of the topical references, and we couldn't understand what the hell they were saying for much of the time, but their behavior and voices were (and continue to be), simply stated, hilarious.


The Mehrabian myth about nonverbal communication only makes sense when you include an understanding of metacommunication.  To use a verbal example, if I call you a jerk, that's communication, that's content.  If I then say, I'm just kidding, that's a verbal form of metacommunication, telling you something about how to interpret the content, and also about how we relate to each other (on a friendly basis).  If I just said I'm just kidding,though, without the content, it would have no meaning, it only works when it modifies a content-level message.  This is the point that the video makes when it shows you the cartoon guy talking without hearing his words.


But we should also recall that animals communicate entirely through nonverbal communication.  If a strange dog growls at you and bares his teeth, there are no words, but I think you get the message.  Babies also communicate in this way.  When a baby cries, we know that he or she wants something, and then we proceed to see if it's milk, or a diaper change, or just some company.


This all relates, in media ecology terms, to McLuhan's saying that the medium is the message.  Animals and babies communicate through the medium of nonverbal communication, and so do we as adults.  The medium of language is also the content of speech, and writing (McLuhan noted that the content of a medium includes another medium), the medium of spoken language is the content of our bodies (produced by the human body), and in this sense our words are powerfully influenced by the nonverbal.  

The technologizing of the word means that other nonverbal factors play a part as well, such as the choice of writing system, use of spaces between words, line breaks, paragraphing, punctuation marks, capitalization, handwriting, typeface and font, type of writing surface, other physical characteristics of the print medium, and other display, transmission, and storage characteristics of the electronic medium.  This aspect of the nonverbal goes far beyond the issue of snazzy PowerPoints, or dramatic delivery.


And that brings me back to the point made by CreativityWorks, and I want to conclude by saying that they are absolutely right, content counts, words are our most important form of communication.  The medium is the message does not mean that we should ignore content, and as Neil Postman has made clear, words and language, as a medium, can be characterized as content-centered, in fact.  So, bravo to Mr. Shovel and Ms. Leyton, I wish you the best of success with your consulting, and I add my endorsement 100% to your message, but only 93% to your nonverbals.

Fantasies of Seinfeld

So, my son has discovered Seinfeld, and turned into a huge fan of the series. Not that there's anything wrong with it, mind you. The series is, after all, the best sitcom ever in the history of broadcasting.

As has so often been repeated, it was the show about nothing, which actually means that it was the show about communication (ever read what Plato had to say about rhetoric in the Phaedrus and the Gorgias?). It was Erving Goffman's The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life turned into twenty-two minutes of comedy a week. And more often than not, it was a show about media--someone needs to compile a key of all of the references to motion pictures, other television shows, comics, and other forms of popular culture that were used in the series. As a show about nothing, it was easy to fill it up with innumerable references, allusions, and quotations.

And so, not surprisingly, Seinfeld has lent itself to further play with its iconography, re-imagining the sitcom along the lines of grand fantasy. In this spirit, I want to share with you an image my son found on the net, entitled Seinfeld Wars:







I thought that was pretty comical, especially George as R2D2, and Newman in the background as Darth Vader. Jerry fits in nicely as Luke Skywalker, Elaine makes sense as Princess Leia (and Elaine is essentially a Jewish-American Princess, even though the character is identified as a shiksa (non-Jewish woman) on the show--George and Kramer are both Jewish character types as well, even though they are presented as gentiles).

Probably the toughest decision was whether to make Kramer into Chewbacca the Wookie (Kramer does have some animalistic traits), or to depict him as C3P0, as was done here. I think this was the right choice, as they share the same quality of awkwardness, although the decision to have him hold a gun strikes me as a mistake--that's not C3P0 at all! Instead, a better correspondence would have been to give Kramer one of his typically confused expressions.

So anyway, I took a further look, and found a Seinfeld Wizard of Oz as well:







This one isn't as good, simply because the correspondence between the characters is less than perfect. Sure, Elaine could be Dorothy, who else? Jerry? Actually, in terms of group dynamics, that would make more sense. So, Jerry as the Tin Man? No heart? Jerry? I don't think so. Kramer as the Scarecrow works in regard to body type and that same awkwardness, although (as my son just pointed out to me), personality-wise the Cowardly Lion might be a better fit. Again, George as the Cowardly Lion seems to be more about body type than personality. So, nice try, but it just doesn't work.

Now, I have not done an exhaustive search, so maybe a Star Trek Seinfeld is out there? Jerry as Captain Kirk, Elaine as Lieutenant Uhura, George as Dr. McCoy, and Kramer as, what else? The alien, Mr. Spock. Well, if it hasn't been done, maybe there's an artist out there willing to take this on?

How about applying McLuhan's laws of media to form a Seinfeld tetrad? Here goes:

Enhance=Jerry
Obsolesce=George
Retrieve=Kramer
Reverse=Elaine

All right, all right, enough already, I admit it. This has been the blog about nothing, and that's no fantasy.