Communication presupposes the ability to be surprised- it implies that we are receiving information that we did not previously have or in a context we would not have seen were it not for the other conversation partner. When we receive information we compare that information to other information we know. Luhman calls this, a ******comparative schema****** . New and novel ideas can happen when the two communication partners are working with different ******comparative schema******.
References
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, Communicating With Slipboxes
One of the most basic presuppositions of communication is that the partners can mutually surprise each other. Only in the way can information be produced in the respective other. Information is an intra-systematic event. It results when one compares one message or entry with regard to other possibilities. Information, accordingly, originates only in systems which possess a comparative schema—even if this amounts only to: “this or something else.” For communication, we do not have to presuppose that both parties use the same comparative schema. The effect of surprise even increases when this is not the case and when we believe that a message means something (or is useful) against the background of other possibilities. Put differently, the variety in communicating systems increases when it may happen that the two partners successfully communicate in the face of different comparative goals. (This means that it is useful for the other partner.) This requires the addition of randomness (Zufall) into the system—randomness in the sense that the agreement of the different comparative schemata is not been fixed, or that the information which is transmitted by communication is correct, but rather that this happens (or does not happen) “at the occasion” of communication.