Part 8 (1/2)

Telephony as a practical experience in modern cohly integrated, parallel, and distributed forital networks that increasingly represent the oal and destination at the same tireat extent ant to be or are able to do With another click, we are only the instantiation of so The use of is to the same broad fraly omnipotent We became connected to the world, but disconnected froh a variety of backchannels expands frohways, a structure is put in place that effectively resets our coordinates in the world of global activity Defying the laws of physics, we can be in more than one place at the same time And we can be e under such circumstances becomes a totally new experience of self-constitution

Still, understanding language is understanding those who express theardless of the ht to culture the e in a civilization whose scale ell adapted to the linear nature of writing and reading, and to the logic of truth ee However, literacy lacks heuristic dimensions, is slow, and of limited interactivity It rationalizes even the irrational, taking into bureaucratic custody all there is to our life Common experience, in a lie notation, is bound to facilitate interpretation and support conflicting choices Divergent experiences, many driven by the search for the useful, the efficient, thethee less adapted to our self-constitution, and thus less easy to understand In such a context, literacy can be perceived only as a phenos it encomapsses unifor only a e forht about the realization that literacy today e or experiences, than to actually eht still affect the es as tools adapted to the various e see the world, the e it and report on what happens as a result But even under these charitable assumptions, it does not follow that literacy will, or should, continue to remain the panacea for all hunification

The Functioning of Language

To function is a verb derived fro machines We expect from machines unifor the e, we should be aware that it entails understandings originating fron systems, in particular those eventually ehtforward: identify language functions as they are defined through various pragh which these functions are acco er supports practical experiences at the efficiency level required by the scale of the pragnification

Traditionally, language functions either are associated with the workings of the brain or defined in the realm of human interaction In the first case, comprehension, speech production, the ability to read, spell, write, and sih non-invasive ists attee functions relate to the brain In the second case, the focus is on social and co interest in underlying aspects (often computationally e functions in the practical experience, ie, prage functions are, in the final analysis, sign processes

Preceding language, signs functioned based on their ontogenetic condition As marks left behind-footprints, blood frons facilitated associations only to the extent that individuals directly experienced their conitive awareness of such marks led to associations of patterns, such as action and reaction, cause and effect Biting that leaves behind teeth a path, obsidian flakes where stones had been processed, ashes where a fire had burned-and, even th or weakness-are less iht the unintentional phase of sign experience to an end In ins, which are supposed to resemble whatever they stand for, the mark is not left, but produced with the express desire to share

The function best describing signs that are inator is expression Coether through shared experiences

Signification corresponds to an experience that has signs as its object and relies on the syns with the nification expresses the self-reflective dinification, vary dramatic framework to another

Expressions, as simili of individual characteristics and personal experience, can be seen as translations of these characteristics and of the experience through which they coe footprint is a e foot, human or animal It is important insofar as it defines, within a limited scale of experience, a possible outcome essential to the survival of those involved Expressions in speech are e within orality rested upon a shared experience of ti, expression hides itself in the physical characteristics of the skill This is hoe co patterns of the ical characteristics

Literacy is not concerned with this kind of expression, although literacy is conducive to it and eventually serves as a y Rather, literacy stipulates nor thematics based on literacy, the efficiency of practical experiences of self-constitution is enhanced by uniforerprints of terrorists, we experience the function of expression in aler explosions, or of manufacturers of explosives-are accidental Terrorists would prefer to leave none

The analysis can be repeated for conification What they have in coressive scale: expression for kin, expression for larger groups, collective expression, forceful expression as the scale of activity increases and individuals are gradually being negated in their characteristics Coether etherness of a tribe, colobe But as available resources do not necessarily keep up with increased populations, and even less with the growth in need and expectations, it is critical to integrate cognitive resources in experiences of self-constitution Con systeher levels than during any previous prag even higher expectations of efficiency and, implicitly, the need for means to meet such expectations Only as practical experiences beconitive resources do changes-such as fro, and fro to literacy, or from literacy to post- literacy-take place In other words, once the functioning of language no longer adequately supports hu the efficiency that corresponds to the actual scale of that pragnification become necessary

These remarks concern our subject, ie, the transitional nature of any sign system, and in particular that of orality or that of literacy, in tays: 1

They make us aware of fundanification) and their dependence on pragmatic contexts 2

They point to conditions under which newcoe experiences, people constituted their identity in a phase of circular and self-referential reflection This was followed by a prage and language notation With writing, and especially with literacy, sequentiality, linearity, hierarchy, and centralism beca was stamped by these characteristics at its inception, as were other practical activities With its unfolding in literacy, it actively shaped further practical experiences The potential of experiences sharing in these characteristics was reached in productive activities, in social life, in politics, in the arts, in coher-level languages and of , and si, however, will forever escape us if we are not prepared to see what makes thes and their dynaenetic script To make sense of any explanatory models advanced, here or elsewhere, we need to understand the relation between cultural structure-in which sign systems, literacy, and post-literate means are identified-and social structure, which co society The preinators of the behaviorist model believed that we are the source of our behavior (Skinner went on record with this in an interview shortly before his death), we can look at the individuals constituting a hue is only one agent of integration a many The shi+ft from the natural to the cultural-with its climax in literacy-was actually from immediacy, circularity, discreteness, and the physical realm to indirectness, sequentiality, linearity, and e of course, to the civilization of illiteracy, characterized by uration, non-linearity, distribution of tasks, and e is as s constituted in succeeding practical experiences of a funda of language cannot be expressed in rotations per second (of amachine) It cannot even be expressed in our new measurement of bits and bytes and all kinds of flops

Expressions, opportunities for exchange of infore (to keep to the y) But nitive aspect of huhts and ideas

We encounter language as we continuously externalize our biological and cultural identities in the act of living as hus Attee in soe froroup practicing such notation Even in the absence of the originator of whatever the notation conveyed, as long as the experience was shared, the notation remained viable Constituted in human praxis, notation became a reality with an apparent life of its own It affected interactions as well as a course of action, to the degree that notation could describe it Notation predates writing, addressing senous practical experiences As the scale grew and endeavors required different forms of interaction, the written evolved fro notations based on constitutive experiences with their own characteristics Together with the experience of writing, an entire body of linear conventions was established

Circumstances that made possible the constitution of ideas and their understanding deserve attention because they relate to a for from the entire realm of known creatures Ideas, no matter how complex, pertain to states of affairs in the world: physical, biological, or spatial reality embodied in an individual's self-constitution They also pertain to the states ofthem Ideas are syuages people have developed in their praxis What ant to find out is whether there is an intrinsic relation between literacy and the for of ideas We want to know if ideas can be constituted and/or understood in fore, such as in drawings, or in the more current multimedia

Humans not only express theh their sign systems, but also listen to theinators (emitters, as the information theory ns succeed themselves in a series of self-controlled sequences Synthesis, as the generation of new expression by asse what is known in neays appropriate to new practical experiences, is continuously controlled by self-analysis

Pre-verbal and sub-verbal unarticulated languages (at the signal level of se of kinesic or proxe sensations directly, as well as through rudimentary specification of context The relationshi+p of articulated language and unarticulated sub-verbal languages is demonstrated at the level of predominantly natural activities as well as at the level of predominantly socio- cultural activities

One exae, olfaction played a role co taste This changed as experience e replaced direct experience Within the pragher efficiency associated with literacy, the sense of s done aith The decrease of the weight of biological communication, in this case of chemo-physical nature, is paralleled by the increase of importance of the immaterial, not substance-bound, communication

Granted, there are no ideas, in the true definition of the word, that can be expressed in s the olfactory and the gustatory, as well as other senses, affect areas of human practical experiences beyond literacy Identification of kin, awareness of reproduction cycles, and alare, which slowly assues

Writing and the expression of ideas