[Biomedical-cybernetics] Communication, Chaos, and Complexity, SCTPLS 2010

[Guastello, Stephen]

The CALL FOR PAPERS is open until April 30:
www.societyforchaostheory.org/conf/2010/cfp.html<http://www.societyforchaostheory.org/conf/2010/cfp.html>
MeanwhileŠ

We are honored to announce another featured speaker
Phillip Salem, Texas State University

who will present
"Finding the Sweet Spot in Human Communication"

at the
20th Annual International Conference of the
Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences
University of Texas, San Marcos, TX, July 22-24, 2010

The dynamic tension in all living systems is 
between similarity and difference. There are many 
sets of polarized terms representing this 
tension, but chaos and complexity scholars 
recognized this tension as amounts of 
information. Information represents the amount of 
relative variety - a mix of similarity and 
difference, and when the amounts were high, but 
not too high, the system moved to transformation 
- to the edge of chaos, to the complexity regime, 
to strange attractors, or to chaos, depending on 
the model. The sweet spot is that range of 
relative variety, just the proper mix of 
similarity and difference, leading to 
transformation.
Human communication is an emergent social 
process. It occurs when individuals in a social 
relationship create messages cueing each other as 
part of an ongoing episode. Human communication 
is an effort to make sense of an episode created 
by the process itself. The process constitutes 
our social and psychological life together.
This paper explores the dynamic tension in 
communication constituting three phenomena: (a) 
self, (b) trust in immediate and extended 
relationships such as social networks, and (c) 
organizations. In each case I will describe 
current literature highlighting tensions between 
similarity and difference, and I will explore the 
potential to move from one basin of attraction to 
another. The primary constraints on modeling 
communication transformations are discovering the 
appropriate parameters and bracketing sequences 
to define initial conditions, constraints common 
to modeling all nonlinear processes.

Dr. Salem is a Professor of Organizational 
Communication, at Texas State since 1974 (B.S. 
Ed., Northern State University, M.A. University 
of Denver, Ph.D., University of Denver.) Dr. 
Salem has just completed The Complexity of Human 
Communication (2009), a book describing the 
process and evolving nature of communication. He 
recently edited Organizational Communication and 
Change, a collection of papers from scholars 
attending conferences he directed in 1976 and in 
1996. Dr. Salem has received awards for his work 
about communication and technology and is known 
for his work in educational administration, 
including Organizational Communication in Higher 
Education, published by AAHE. He directed a 
project funded by the Department of Education to 
develop a theory of organizational factors 
influencing the incorporation of new units into 
an organization. His consultant work focuses on 
organizational communication development and 
routinely assists clients in assessing and 
planning organizational communication.







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