Abstract:

We raise the question: How does one engage in dialogue? A basic notion for a dialogue would be sitting in a circle, and so we did. The circle as an idea does not favor anyone and hence our co-authorship for this paper and its presentation. The circle, in a digitized environment, allowed for direct communication among us. In principle, a circle must work without any leader and without any agenda. However, we noticed that a lack of leadership caused a great deal of anxiety in not knowing what to do. Thus we agreed upon a facilitator who got the group going and who explained what’s happening from time to time. The function and success of the facilitator was to work himself out of the job. This was achieved in three months when the group began to depend less and less upon the facilitator to sustain their dialogue. In sub-groups of three, we the authors constructed a dialogue and created a visual circle in an electronic fishbowl. David Bohm in his book On Dialogue writes: “Dialogue is really aimed at going into the whole thought process and changing the way the thought process occurs collectively. We haven’t really paid much attention to thought as a process. We have engaged in thoughts, but we have only paid attention to the content, not to the process.” (p.9) Thought is generally understood to be an idea or opinion; a mental act of consideration or remembrance; an intention or hope of receiving or doing something; the action or process of thinking. The paper presents an example of our collective process for developing an idea from an initial position and, completing 'trajectories of thought' resulting in a circle of knowing. We did this in a reflexive way, socially constructing a visual culture through symbolic interaction. We thereby created a circle of knowing among ourselves.

In the methodology of participant-observation, we are simultaneously observers and the observed. We observed the assumptions that had an affect on our observations. The way we see things and the way we experience them are affected by our assumptions. To observe our assumptions was like, observing the observer making observations. As individual observers, we selected and gathered relevant information and organized it into something meaningful. It was "gathering with the eye," or "listening" as "gathering with the ear.” Finally, we compared and contrasted our meaning constructions and came to new realizations and insights that furthered our collective understanding of the subject at hand. One participant stated: “This class and the fishbowl has created a new meaning to group work for me. Working in a group is much more than multiple people completing a task in order to reach a final product, it is about learning from each other's words. I have learned that we must examine the words that our group members choose because that is how we are able to discover their own personal culture. With that being said, we must choose our own words ever so carefully in order to adequately portray our own personal culture. This is what group work means to me now.” In conclusion, we believe in the dictum, Demo or Die, and our presentation will show and tell the following: process of dialogue; trajectory of ideas; social construction of ideas; role of facilitator, collective development of thought, participant-observation, symbolic interaction and reflexivity. Finally, our difficulties and short-comings in creating new meaning in a digital and visual culture will be discussed.

Keywords:

Dialogue, Meaning, Thought, Participant-observation, Symbolic Interaction, Reflexivity.