Kan symboler överföra mening? : en teoretisk diskussion om kommunikation

Sammanfattning: This work is divided into two parts - a practical/technical view of communication, followed by a change to a broader view with a theoretical language perspective. The overarching purpose is:To increase the understanding of how meaning is transferred between people through the use of symbols.The first part focuses on describing how communication with the help of symbols in computerised information systems is possible. The author is attempting to combine two different models of communication to develop an analysis and development tool, combining both Shannon &Weavers (1949), the Mathematical Theory of Communication and Langefors (1995), the Infological Equation. To understand how communication in computerised systems occurs, it is also necessary to understand how people deal with signs and symbols. The problems in understanding how symbols are interpreted and used were demonstrated to be very complex and difficult.Therefore, the second part focuses even closer on the basic human aspects of communication. To understand how symbols are interpreted, an understanding of our language and how it is used is needed. Investigating how language and reality are connected and showing ontological and epistemological statements are also needed.The result is that interpretation as an act cannot be isolated and analysed as simply a process between one human and a symbol, which was a necessary underlying statement in combining the Shannon & Weavers model with that from Langefors. Interpreting symbols and creating new symbols requires more connections between people than those directly observable. Intersubjectivity claims that people share some form of collective ideas. Communication cannot simply be divided into a component that only contains an interpreting human and an interpreted object. This classification is meaningless because the interpretation process is intersubjective and cannot be illustrated without further subjects. A human can therefore not be seen as an isolated island to where a symbol is sent in the form of a separate object to be meaningfully interpreted. The final conclusion is that the best way of developing computerised information systems for the future is to build systems that assist personal meeting and communication, instead of focusing on advanced technical solutions.