The unlecture this week seemed to be about topics once again explored in Communication Histories and Technologies, specifically mediation. There is only a certain amount of control an author has over their own work, they cannot choose how the audience will interpret it. Anyone person will perceive a piece differently to everyone else, and this cannot be avoided.

This is an interesting idea, as it means that control is really only a utopian – or dystopian – goal that is, ultimately, unreachable. Nothing can take charge of an individual’s interpretation because no one has shared contexts, even people who have been raised in exactly the same way at exactly the same time. Their minds will differ, and that’s where interpretation generally occurs.

We can do what we can to take what control we can: we use definite terms, we are succinct and to-the-point. We attempt objectivity. We assign order. But the audience will still get the final say.

‘I am alive’

Take this statement. What does it mean? It could be an objective fact: I am alive. But what does it mean to whoever reads it? Is it being ironic? Does the subject really feel ‘dead’, as in unmotivated, lethargic and pessimistic? Are they happy to have survived an unfortunate event?

This is mediation, it’s almost the space between what is presented and how it is taken. This is where there is no control. There will never be control, because we can’t beam thoughts into people’s heads and tell them how to think. When you think about it, the mediation is all there is. The mediation of a word is what gives it meaning, it’s why ‘duck’ is a bird, a verb and funny word, and why it’s whatever-it-is at any specific time. Mediation is why ‘DUCK!’ is taken by some as something we scream when a brick is thrown at someone’s head, while others might picture an excited child yelling at the birds in the park. We can contextualise as best we can: ‘Stacy saw the brick coming, and thinking quick screamed ‘DUCK!’ to her comrade before the red prism could have its devastating collision’. The meaning is obvious, but we still don’t know everything. Things are lost, things are gained, but no doubt the story is given more meaning through the audience’s interpretation. Perhaps the word ‘comrade’ is focused on: are they soldiers? What assumptions can we make?

So that’s it, really. The conclusions we jump to about something, even if the conclusion we reach is that we shouldn’t be jumping to conclusions. Mediation is where control dies a quick death, and there’s not much else to it. We can’t do anything about it, and we definitely shouldn’t. Mediation is where we take what is given to us and we add our personal touch. Everything we read, see, touch and perceive is mediated and is thus experienced only by ourselves: every single thing is some other thing to everyone else.