Generalized media transmit selections across chains beyond everyday language

Evidence

We employ the concept of generalized media of communication in order to tackle this problem, and to designate devices additional to everyday language, devices which are symbolically generalized codes of selection, the function of which is to provide the capacity for intersubjective transmission of acts of selection over shorter or longer chains. Truth, love, power, money2 are outstanding examples of this kind of device which have evolved successfully. Through the generalizing capacity of such media, structures of expectation and patterns of motivation are formed which make it possible for selections made by one individual to be relevant to another, in the sense that he is aware of them and also does not treat them as an open question but performs his own selections as consequences of them. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 207

Categorization

• DEFINE: The definition of generalized media of communication — the core concept the reader needs to operationalize Luhmann’s system trust.
• XREF: Truth, love, power, money as media maps onto Giddens’s disembedding mechanisms and expert systems — precisely the bridge the reader is constructing toward The Remains of the Day. — connects to: Contagious media spreads fastest when stripped of all inessential content — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 949
• ADDENDUM: Power as a generalized medium here recalls how the third article ties ritual sacrifice to sacral kingship — power as an impersonal medium rather than mere personal authority.