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Digital Culturein

The Semiosphere

Med 7 - Fall 2005Digital Culture

Aalborg University Copenhagen

Luis Emilio Bruni

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The living sphere

The production and exchange of information and signs is a defining characteristic of life communication and semiosis occur only in the living sphere.

  In the non-living sphere there are only impacts, forces and

energy transformations.

  Life is a communication web with a long history.

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The Biosphere

1875 the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess The Face of the Earth.   1920s The ecological concept of the Biosphere Russian geologist

Vladimir I. Vernadsky.  The Biosphere the totality and the organic whole of living matter

and also the condition for the continuation of life. 

“… all life-clusters are intimately bound to each other. One cannot exist without the other. This connection between different living films and clusters, and their invariancy, is an age-old feature of the mechanism of the earth’s crust, which has existed all through geological time.”

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The Biosphere today

The biosphere that part of a planet's terrestrial system— including air, land and water— in which life develops, and which life processes in turn transform.

  It is the collective creation of a variety of organisms and species which

form the diversity of the ecosystem.

  From the broadest geophysiological point of view the biosphere is

the global ecological system integrating all living beings and their relationships, with their interaction with the elements of the lithosphere (rocks), the hydrosphere (water), and the atmosphere (air).

Man and Woman in the Biosphere culture.

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The biological semiosphere

The semiosphere a sphere like the atmosphere, the hydrosphere or the biosphere. It pervades the biosphere and consists in communication: sounds, odours, movements, colours, electric fields, waves of any kind, chemical signals, touch etc. (Hoffmeyer, 1997).

Semiotic niche organisms not only belong to ecological niches they are always also bound to a semiotic niche, i.e. they will have to master a set of signs of visual, acoustic, olfactory, tactile and chemical origin in order to survive (in the semiosphere).

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Semiotic interactions

A trend in evolution the development of organisms with ever more complex Umwelts organisms with a subjective experience of the world supported by increasingly sophisticated sensory apparatus (and corresponding nervous system in higher animals) which would enable organisms to form fine-tuned internal impressions of what lay round about them.

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Complex Umwelts

Many advantages of possessing refined Umwelts semiotic freedom e.g. the capacity for anticipation, the possibility of foreseeing actual events and protect oneself against them the possibility of deriving advantage from anticipating events.

  Human beings have ingeniously managed to create

technological extensions in order to increase their sensorial resolution an analogy between the evolution of biological sensorial apparatus in species and the evolution of the “environmental monitoring techno-web” the technosphere.

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The Nature – Culture Interface

The Biological Realm

The Cultural Realm

From molecules to narratives

and from narratives back to molecules …

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Man and Woman in the Semiosphere

Cultural History a vertical semiotic system complex subjective relations between human individuals and societies through the times runs in parallel or immersed in Natural History.

Natural language a particular state of consciousness a particular cognitive and communicational process the [Cultural] Semiosphere Yuri Lotman (1990).

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Technological determinism

Technological determinism like any other determinism seeks to explain (social and historical) phenomena in terms of one principal or determining factor.

The technological determinist view is a technology-led theory of social change technology is seen as 'the prime mover' in history.

Technological determinism particular technical developments, communications technologies or media, or, most broadly, technology in general are the sole or prime antecedent causes of changes in society.

Technology is seen as the fundamental condition underlying the pattern of social organization.

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Technology ”shapes” culture

Technology in general and communications technologies in particular the basis of society in the past, present and even the future.

Technologies such as writing or print or television or the computer 'changed society'.

In its most extreme form new technologies transform society at every level, including institutions, social interaction and individuals.

At the least a wide range of social and cultural phenomena are seen as shaped by technology.

'Human factors' and social arrangements are seen as secondary.

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Leslie White (1949)

Leslie White (1949) We may view a cultural system as a series of three horizontal strata:

the technological layer on the bottom

the philosophical on the top

the sociological stratum in between

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Technological layer

Sociological layer

Philosophical layer

Leslie White (1949)

The technological factor is therefore the determinant of a cultural system as a whole. It determines the form of social systems, and technology and society together determine the content and orientation of philosophy.

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The medium is the message

Marshall McLuhan interprets Lynn White's book, Medieval Technology and Social Change as suggesting, in McLuhan's words, that 'such inventions as the horse collar quickly led to the development of the modern world’.

McLuhan the print revolution begun by Gutenberg was the forerunner of the industrial revolution.

One unforeseen consequence of print was the fragmentation of society readers would now read in private, and so be alienated from others.

McLuhan saw electronic media as a return to collective ways of perceiving the world his "global village" theory posited the ability of electronic media to unify and retribalize the human race.

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Christian FuchsGlobalization and Self-Organization in the Knowledge-Based SocietytripleC 1(2): 105-169, 2003http://tripleC.uti.at

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Let’s draw an analogy

Remember the divide between the world of billiard balls and the world of sensing or perceiving where a sensed difference can generate a change as tangible as the influence that an impact can exert on a billiard ball.

Analogy as our “mental” or “cognitive” process is usually reduced to our physico-chemical substrate – i.e.: our body, the carbohydrate substrate, the “organic” matter that “constitutes” us technological determinists want to reduce culture to its “material substrate”, the medium, the technology, the hardware.

The Cybertron

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Two communication systemsIn living systems:

1) Vertical semiotic system genetic and epigenetic communication down through the generations heredity genealological hierarchy.

2) Horizontal semiotic system communication throughout the ecological space ecological hierarchy.

In cultural systems:

1) Diachronic communication history

2) Synchronic communication here and now

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Back to Cultural Communication

The Semiotic Theory of Culture

Yuri Lotman

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Yuri Lotman (1922-1993)

Yuri Lotman thinks in “ecological” terms about the interaction of different semiotic structures and languages.

The Semiosphere “the whole semiotic space of the culture in question”.

Teilhard de Chardin (1949) “noosphere” the domain in which mind is exercised in cybernetics the space occupied by the totality of information and human knowledge collectively available to man the processes operating in this space, e.g., combinatorial mating, classification, reproduction, simplification, selective decay.

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The noosphere

The “sphere of human thought” from the Greek “nous” “mind”.

  Composed of all the interacting minds and memes on

Earth.

  Sometimes a transhuman consciousness arising from all

these interactions Teilhard de Chardin the Omega Point.

 

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Vernadsky’s noosphere In Vernadsky’s theory the noosphere is the third in a succession of

phases of development of the earth, after the geosphere (inanimate matter) and the biosphere (biological life).

Just as the emergence of life fundamentally transformed the geosphere, the emergence of human cognition fundamentally transforms the biosphere.

In contrast to Darwin’s theory the principles of both life and cognition are the essential features of the earth's evolution, and must have been implicit in the earth all along.

In contrast to the conceptions of Teilhard de Chardin, the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace the noosphere is not something that is just now coming into being, or will emerge in the future; it arrived with the birth of the first cognitive human being.

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Yuri Lotman’s Semiosphere

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The single act of communication The single act of communication the addresser (sender) and the

addressee (receiver).  Can we extrapolate from this simple system the workings of the larger

semiotic process? culture

Sender Receiver   Not a working system  it has to be “immersed” in semiotic space.  All participants in the communicative act must have some previous

experience of communication.  Biosphere Semiosphere the semiotic space necessary for the

existence and functioning of languages not the sum total of different languages.

Channel

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The (Cultural) Semiosphere The semiosphere has a prior existence and is in constant interaction

with languages.

Language a cluster of semiotic spaces and their boundaries.

Each language has a more or less grammatical self-description.

In the reality of semiosis languages are eroded and full of transitional forms.

The unit of semiosis the smallest functioning mechanism not the separate language but the whole semiotic space of the culture in question the semiosphere.

The semiosphere the result and the condition for the development of culture.

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Texts, languages and codes

In semiotics a very general use of the concepts of text, language, codes, medium, grammar, etc

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Heterogeneity

The semiosphere is marked by its heterogeneity.

The languages that fill up the semiotic space are various and they relate to each other along the following spectrum:

 Complete mutual translatability ------- Complete mutual untranslatability.  Heterogeneity defined by the diversity of elements and by their

different functions.  Impossibility of complete homogeneity different degrees of iconism

no mutually complete semantic translatability only conventional correspondence.

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A synchronic cut We can not get an homologous picture across a strictly synchronic

section if we try to give a synthetic picture to include many manifestations of culture simultaneously chronology has to be sacrificed.

At all stages of development there are contacts with texts coming in from cultures which formerly lay beyond the boundaries of the given semiosphere.

  These invasions sometimes by whole cultural layers affect the

internal structure of the “world picture” of a given culture.  Across any synchronic section of the semiosphere different

languages at different stages of development are in conflict some texts are immersed in languages not their own while the codes to decipher them may be entirely absent.

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The evolution of culture

The evolution of culture quite different from biological evolution.

  What works today is not necessarily the most recent

temporal section but the whole packed history of cultural texts.

  Ex: an evolutionary approach to literary history the state

of literature at a given time judged by the list of works written in that year instead the works being read that year a complete different picture.

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Asymmetry

The structure of the semiosphere asymmetrical currents of internal translations that permeate the whole density of the semiosphere.

Translation a primary mechanism of consciousness to express something in another language is a way of understanding it.

Many languages of the semiosphere semiotically asymmetrical they do not have mutual semantic correspondences the whole semiosphere a generator of information.

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Asymetry: center and periphery

Assymetry is apparent in the relationship between the centre of the semiospehere and its periphery.

  At the centre of the semiosphere the most developed and

structurally organized languages i.e. the natural language of the given culture the true organizing core of a cultural semiosphere.

  Besides the structural organized language many partial

languages, language-like systems serve only certain cultural functions can be part of semiosis in a semiotic context.

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Self-description at the centre

The highest form and the final stage of a semiotic system’s structural organization self-description.

Grammars are written customs and laws are codified the system gains greater structural organization then it tries to extend the norms over the entire semiosphere.

The system losses inner reserves of indeterminacy flexibility capacity for generating new information potential for dynamic development.

Self-description the necessary response to the threat of too much diversity.

The system risks losing its unity and definition risk of disintegration.

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Semiotic reality at the periphery

Whole layers of cultural phenomena from the point of view of the given metalanguage may be marginal will have no relation to the idealized portrait of that culture declared “non-existent” e.g. unknown and forgotten authors or figures declared non-existent while alive innovators cultural agents ahead of their time.

At the metalevel semiotic unity but at the level of the semiotic reality described by the metalevel all kind of other tendencies flourish e.g. pagan rituals are disguised under an imposed and force cult e.g. santeria.

  Semantic currents flow not only across the horizontal levels of the

semiosphere but also have their effect in a vertical direction and promote complex dialogues between the levels.

 

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The boundary

But the unity of the semiotic space of the semiosphere is brought about not only by metastructural formations even more crutial is the unifying factor of the boundary which divides the internal space of the semiosphere from the external its inside from its outside.

  The notion of boundary in cybernetics the

“interface”.  The internal space of a semiosphere unequal yet unified

asymmetrical yet uniform conflicting structures.

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In and out

The primary mechanism of semiotic individuation the boundary the outer limit of a first-person form.

This space “ours”, “my own”, “safe”, “harmoniously organized”, etc.

“Their space” “other”, “hostile”, “dangerous”, “chaotic”, etc.

Every culture divides the world “its own internal space” and an “external space” “their’s”.

The boundary separates living/dead settle people/nomads a state, social, national, confessional, or any other frontier

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Summarising

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System of coordinates

Different substructures in the semiosphere organized into a general system of coordinates

1. on the temporal axis past, present and future

2. on the spatial axis internal space, external space and the boundary between them.

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At the centre

The metastructural self-description from the centre of the culture over all its semiotic space can make a historian to look at an entire synchronic section of the semiosphere as something unified an illusion of unification.

  At the centre our language self-description becomes

rigid incapable of further development

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At the periphery

Towards the periphery it becomes “someone else’s” language does not reflect the real semiotic reality of the periphery

Texts generated according to the norms of the centre hang in the air without any real semiotic context organic creations of this semiotic milieu come into conflict with the artificial norms from the centre

The periphery the area of semiotic dynamism tension new languages come into being ex: official and a vanguard art.

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The creative power of ”frontiers” The hottest spots for semioticizing processes are the boundaries of the

semiosphere.

Ambivalence of the boundary it separates and unites.  The boundary belongs to both frontier cultures to both

contiguous semiospheres.

The boundary is bilingual and polylingual a mechanism for translating texts where what is “external” is transformed into what is “internal”

  The boundary a filtering membrane transforms foreign texts so

they become part of the semiosphere’s internal semiotics while retaining their own characteristics.

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Metastructure and hierarchical levels

The entire space of the semiosphere is transacted by boundaries of different levels boundaries of different languages and even of texts.

The internal space of each of this sub-semiospheres has its own semiotic “I” realized as the relationship of any language, group of texts, or separate text to a metastructural space which describes them languages and texts are hierarchically disposed on different levels.

  These sectional boundaries which run through

semiospehere create a multi-level system.

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Sub-Semiospheres

Certain parts of the semiosphere at different levels of self-description may form:

1. A semiotic unity a semiotic continuity demarcated by a single boundary.

2. A group of enclosed spaces marked off as discrete areas by the boundaries between them.

3. Part of a more general space one side of which is demarcated by a fragment of a boundary while the other is open.

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Translation and internalization Disturbances and rebellion arise when two methods of encoding are in

conflict.  Because the semiotic space is transected by numerous boundaries

each message that moves across it must be many times translated and transformed the process of generating new information snowballs.

  The function of any boundary or filter from the membrane of the

living cell to the biosphere and the semiosphere to control, filter and adapt the external into the internal in different ways and at different levels.

On the level of the semiosphere a separation of “one’s own” from “someone else’s” the filtering of what comes from outside and is treated as a text in another language and the translation of this text into one’s own language i.e. external space becomes structured.

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Creativity

The periphery is brightly coloured while the nucleus is “normal”, i.e. lacking colour or scent.

The victory of a semiotic system the shifting to the centre with an inevitable “toning down”.

Ex: the cycle of ageing the rebellious youth becomes the “normal” respectable gentleman from provocative “colourfulness” to sobriety.

Cultures create not only its own type of internal organization but also its own type of external “disorganization”

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What is new with digital culture?

 Technological determinists emphasize that semiotic ecologies are influenced by the fundamental design features of different media.

It is important to recognize the importance of socio-cultural and historical factors in shaping how different media are used and their (ever-shifting) status within particular cultural contexts.

There is a growth in the importance of visual media compared with linguistic media in contemporary society there is an associated shift in the communicative functions of such media.

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The ”virtual space” of digital culture

In the ”digital” or ”information” age what are the implications of:

Synchronicity and diachronicity.

The center/periphery tension.

Sub-semiospheres in multi-level systems.

Boundaries and translatability.

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The Mediasphere

Mediasphere the collective ecology of the world media, including newspapers, journals, television, radio, books, novels, advertising, press releases, publicity and the blogosphere, to include any and all media both broadcast and published.

John Hartley the whole universe of media, both factual and fictional, in all forms (print, electronic, screen) all genres (news, drama) all taste hierarchies (from art to entertainment) in all languages in all countries.

Mediasphere is itself contained by the much larger semiosphere which is the whole universe of sense-making by whatever means, including speech.

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The blogosphere

The blogosphere is the collective term encompassing all weblogs or blogs as a community or social network.

Many weblogs are densely interconnected bloggers read others' blogs, link to them, reference them in their own writing, and post comments on each others' blogs.

Because of this, the interconnected blogs have grown their own culture.

Blogs themselves are just instances of a particular formatting choice whereas the blogosphere is a social phenomenon.

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The syndisphere

The syndisphere is a region of the internet similar to the blogosphere, but incorporating the space within syndicated RSS or Atom feeds.

The syndisphere adds large news sites such as the BBC or New York Times to smaller applications or services capable of generating RSS/ATOM feeds, such as update notices for webcomics, to the blogosphere's great content.

(RSS is a family of XML file formats for web syndication used by (amongst other things) news websites and weblogs. The abbreviation is used to refer to standards such as: “Rich Site Summary” or “Really Simple Syndication”)

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The Semantic Web

The Semantic Web a project that intends to create a universal medium for information exchange by giving meaning (semantics), in a manner understandable by machines, to the content of documents on the Web.

Currently under the direction of the Web's creator Tim Berners-Lee the World Wide Web Consortium the Semantic Web extends the World Wide Web through the use of standards, markup languages and related processing tools.

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Global complexity

The evolution of many kind of interdependent processes.

Global issues.

Globalization our perception of the evolution of human communication.

Interdependent cultural and institutional web through which the interdependence of human behaviours are canalized.

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ContentDigital Culture

InterfacesSemiosphere

Cultural Products

Hybrid

Ad-hocUtilityConcept

Applied

Basic

ScienceArt

Technology

Medialogy

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Digital Culturein

The Semiosphere

Med 7 - Fall 2005Digital Culture

Aalborg University Copenhagen

Luis Emilio Bruni