Building Communication Theory from Cybersemiotics

Communication sciences have had a significant problem defining what communication is, what communication is about, and what it describes in biological, human, and mechanical contexts. The mechanistic view sees communication as a process of information exchange while the humanistic view conceptualizes it as meaning production, however, none of them has functioned as common ground for theoretical construction or as a way to identify what is or what is not a communication phenomenon. My answer to this problem is the consideration of communication as a transdisciplinary concept and in doing this I will address two theoretical proposals: Robert T. Craig’s metamodel of communication theory and Søren Brier’s cybersemiotics.A Comunicação Social tem apresentado um grande problema em definir o que é comunicação, do que trata a comunicação e o que ela descreve em contextos biológicos, humanos e mecânicos. A visão mecanicista vê a comunicação como um processo de troca de informações, enquanto a visão humanista a conceitua como produção, entretanto, nenhuma delas tem funcionado como base comum para a construção teórica ou como uma forma de identificar o que é ou não um fenômeno de comunicação. Minha resposta a este problema é a consideração da comunicação como um conceito transdisciplinar e, ao fazê-lo, abordarei duas propostas teóricas: o metamodelo da teoria da comunicação de Robert T. Craig e a cibersemiótica de Søren Brier

Transdisciplinarity seen through Information, Communication, Computation, (Inter-)Action and Cognition

Similar to oil that acted as a basic raw material and key driving force of industrial society, information acts as a raw material and principal mover of knowledge society in the knowledge production, propagation and application. New developments in information processing and information communication technologies allow increasingly complex and accurate descriptions, representations and models, which are often multi-parameter, multi-perspective, multi-level and multidimensional. This leads to the necessity of collaborative work between different domains with corresponding specialist competences, sciences and research traditions. We present several major transdisciplinary unification projects for information and knowledge, which proceed on the descriptive, logical and the level of generative mechanisms. Parallel process of boundary crossing and transdisciplinary activity is going on in the applied domains. Technological artifacts are becoming increasingly complex and their design is strongly user-centered, which brings in not only the function and various technological qualities but also other aspects including esthetic, user experience, ethics and sustainability with social and environmental dimensions. When integrating knowledge from a variety of fields, with contributions from different groups of stakeholders, numerous challenges are met in establishing common view and common course of action. In this context, information is our environment, and informational ecology determines both epistemology and spaces for action. We present some insights into the current state of the art of transdisciplinary theory and practice of information studies and informatics. We depict different facets of transdisciplinarity as we see it from our different research fields that include information studies, computability, human-computer interaction, multi-operating-systems environments and philosophy.Comment: Chapter in a forthcoming book: Information Studies and the Quest for Transdisciplinarity - Forthcoming book in World Scientific. Mark Burgin and Wolfgang Hofkirchner, Editor

Still minding the gap? Reflecting on transitions between concepts of information in varied domains

This conceptual paper, a contribution to the tenth anniversary special issue of information, gives a cross-disciplinary review of general and unified theories of information. A selective literature review is used to update a 2013 article on bridging the gaps between conceptions of information in different domains, including material from the physical and biological sciences, from the humanities and social sciences including library and information science, and from philosophy. A variety of approaches and theories are reviewed, including those of Brenner, Brier, Burgin and Wu, Capurro, Cárdenas-García and Ireland, Hidalgo, Hofkirchner, Kolchinsky and Wolpert, Floridi, Mingers and Standing, Popper, and Stonier. The gaps between disciplinary views of information remain, although there has been progress, and increasing interest, in bridging them. The solution is likely to be either a general theory of sufficient flexibility to cope with multiple meanings of information, or multiple and distinct theories for different domains, but with a complementary nature, and ideally boundary spanning concepts

Observership, 'knowing' and semiosis

This article asks how future semiotic research, particularly with a biosemiotic orientation, will incorporate a theory of observership. The article take its cue from Sebeok's (1986, 1991a, 1991b) comments on John Archibald Wheeler's conception of the 'participatory universe' and attempts to explicate the relevance of Wheeler's (1994, 1998) philosophy of science for semiotics. The article argues that the quantum view of observership aligns with that of semiotics in that both envisage observation as a field of modification. The article seeks to contribute to recent key debates in the field on 'knowing' sciences on relation and cybersemiotics It develops some of the themes foreshadowed towards the end of an earlier article outlining a future orientated observership in contrast to a vis a tergo perspective

The Paradigm of Peircean Biosemiotics

The failure of modern science to create a common scientific framework for nature and consciousness makes it necessary to look for broader foundations in a new philosophy. Although controversial for modern science, the Peircean semiotic, evolutionary, pragmatic and triadic philosophy has been the only modern conceptual framework that can support that transdisciplinary change in our view of knowing that bridges the two cultures and transgresses Cartesian dualism. It therefore seems ideal to build on it for modern biosemiotics and can, in combination with Luhmann’s theory of communication, encompass modern information theory, complexity science and thermodynamics. It allows focus on the connection between the concept of codes and signs in living systems, and makes it possible to re-conceptualize both internal and external processes of the human body, mind and communication in models that fit into one framework

Semiotic Architecture of Viral Data

In the last 5 years, there has been great debate about digital communication and its role in electoral politics. The question on everyone’s mind is: can viral and massive information on social networks change the voting tendencies and behavior of people? We expose a series of theoretical points from the perspective of semiotics and systemics, to understand these communication phenomena, which are hallmarks of the twenty-first century. We also include some cases of semiotic and systemic orientation and our proposal about natural and artificial communication through viral cascades

Internet memes as internet signs: a semiotic view of digital culture

This article argues for a clearer framework of internet-based "memes". The science of memes, dubbed 'memetics', presumes that memes remain "copying units" following the popularisation of the concept in Richard Dawkins' celebrated work, The Selfi sh Gene (1976). Yet Peircean semiotics and biosemiotics can challenge this doctrine of information transmission. While supporting a precise and discursive framework for internet memes, semiotic readings reconfi gure contemporary formulations to the - now-established - conception of memes. Internet memes can and should be conceived, then, as habit-inducing sign systems incorporating processes involving asymmetrical variation. So, drawing on biosemiotics, Tartu-Moscow semiotics, and Peircean semiotic principles, and through a close reading of the celebrated 2011 Internet meme Rebecca Black's Friday, this article proposes a working outline for the defi nition of internet memes and its applicability for the semiotic analysis of texts in new media communication

Making sense of genre : The logic of videogame genre organization

Despite the importance that the dimension of genre holds in media studies, its very definition in the field of videogames is still a matter without consensus. This study intends to outline the logic that lies within the constitution of videoludic genres, understanding them as formal devices configured as per the different thought functions stated by Piaget's cognitive psychology theory. This project will propose a formalist approach from a cybersemiotic perspective. It seeks to establish a cardinal set of relations to understand the compatibilities and incompatibilities traceable in the syntactic functional order of the different videogame genres. Furthermore, a corpus of 43 genres is used to prove the solidity of this theoretical approach, oriented to establish foundations for a praxis of the human-machine ludic relation in fields such as game design and media studies, with the performative character of function as a guiding principle