ABSTRACT

Chapter Five then brings the insights from preceding chapters together we can say something more of the impact of technology as a techno-social force in social change. Social development is necessarily dialogical so the task is then to account or seek a model for the transmission of experiential understanding from those who-have to those who-have-not. The proposed model is for a social manifold through which movements and openings provide mediated arenas for liminal characters so that experiential understanding can be communicated via interpretation rather than explanation. The proposed fields of incongruency is a descriptive term that portrays a role for communication in human cultural transmission that once communicated supersedes conventional understanding in favour of resonance i.e. congruence between lived experiences. Chapter five introduces the first case study looking at the Grass Mud Horse. Introducing some anthropological concepts and establishing a framework for understanding the cultural function of liminal characters and their role in social change, the chapter shows how communications technology radically facilitates the field for such vectors to converge and dissipate and therefore such liminal characters can have vastly exaggerated influence in our technologically complex social systems.