Communication media reduce complexity by symbolically pre-conditioning selections

Evidence

The function of a communication medium lies in transmitting reduced complexity. The selection made by alter limits ego’s possible selections by its being communicated under particular and specified conditions. Dependencies that pass through communication media are distinguished from general interference and mutual hindrance (such as alter listening to the radio and ego being unable to go to sleep) in that they presume some process of communication which can be pre-conditioned by symbols. Thus they are subject to cultural formation, can be changed by evolution, and are compatible with a large number of system conditions. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 601

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core definition of a communication medium — the single most load-bearing concept in the book’s thesis about system trust reducing complexity.
• XREF: The ‘transmitting reduced complexity’ function is precisely Luhmann’s mechanism that the reader maps onto Giddens’s ‘faceless commitments’ — Stevens’s trust in the Darlington household as a medium reducing his decision complexity.