Part 11 (1/2)

The civilization of illiteracy is one of saenetics To understand what thisLiterate appropriation in the form of quotation takes place in the structure of literacy Sequences are designed to accept someone else's words A quote introduces the hierarchy desired or acknowledged by invoking authority or questioning it Authorshi+p is exercised by producing a context for interpretation andliterate rules for their expression Interpretations are deter the deteric The quote e centers of interest and understanding around the quoted

Illiterate appropriation corresponds to a dissolution of hierarchy, to an experience of dissolving it and doing aith sequence, authorshi+p, and the rules of logical inference

It questions the notion of ele choices beyond well formed sentences, beyond words, beyond uists, but al thee experiences), and beyond for Rhyth before the technology ofbecame available So can the structure of a sentence be appropriated, the feel of a text, or of many other forms of expression that are not literacy-based (the visual arts, for instance) Anything pertaining to a written sentence-and for that , odor, texture, es, leaves on a tree, stars, rivers, etc)-can be selected, decomposed into units as small as one desires, and appropriated as an echo of the experience it eurations, as they apply to plants and other living entities, can be sa enetic texture of plants or animals Spliced, a word, a sentence, or a text still maintains relations to the experience in which it was constituted

These relations are enorueness When they relate to rite, they are empowered by emotional components that the literate experience expelled from literate expression There is room for variation, for spontaneity, for the accidental, where before the rigor and logic of good writing stood guard against anything that ical structure, they concern specific characteristics, such as co, the expectation of a shared body of literacy and its attached logic are quite out of touch with the dynanificance than as an extended alphabet from which one can choose, at rando the act The letters are part of a sui generis alphabet, changing as practical experiences change, interacting withhow they work In this new perspective, interpretation is always another instance of constituting the language, not only using it Biological saards the living as a text Its purpose is to affect some components in order to achieve desired qualities related to taste, look, nutritional value, etc This is the core of genetic engineering, a practical experience in which the logic of life, expressed in DNA sequences and configurations, takes precedence over the logic of language and literacy, even if the text enetics, plays such athat the word text derives from the Latin word for to weave, which was later applied to coherent collections of written sentences

Saray mass of information In their practical experiences, people sas as they sara, and even partners (for special occasions or as potential spouses, partners in business, or whatever else) As opposed to quoting, sa- periodic, rando from what literacy celebrated as tradition and continuity And it challenges authorshi+p With increased sa as a practical experience of diversification, the hu acquires a very specific freedom not possible within boundaries of the literate experience Tradition is coression and dualistic (true-false) experience This beco is followed by synthesis, which ree) In the case of music, a device called a sequencer is used for this purpose The conificant in itself at foruages and their consumption in the act, beco arbitrarily defined constitutive units such as notes, rhythnificant is that the say of the hueneticnew plants and animals, and even new e is based on a logic of choices beyond those of realistic representations Logical rules of perspective are negated by rules of juxtaposition Collage, as a technique, anticipates the generalized stage of saes our notion of intellectual property, tradeic firmly attached to the literate experience The faiarism reflected aspects of primitive culture carried over to the civilization of illiteracy: there is no authorshi+p; once so becomes public, it is free to be shared In the sa fro his speeches, or anyone else's for thatresult frooverned by an ear or eye keen to our day's vernacular of machines and alienation The sa does not preserve previous identities, but constitutes new ones, which we integrate in new experiences of our own self-constitution Froic, the procedure is of interest to the extent that it establishes doical identity is redefined froht be ic to theics-each logic assigned to a precise aspect of the systeeainst each other at defined instances Strategies for rate various decision-ical assuical fraical frameworks, adapted to diversity

In conclusion, one h to say that language expresses the biological and the social identity of the hue, and e in literacy,the bio-socio-politico- cultural entity that defines our species The logical appears to be an underlying eleical, etc The hierarchy will probably bother soher place a in the process of hu to qualify as zoon politikon, as homo Sapiens, or homo Ludens (playful man) or homo Faber, he or she nation describes: on the biological level, with other hus, within structures of co's own nature

This is why hu signs

At the various levels at which such signs are generated, interpreted, cons, human identity is ascertained This is what pro as zoon se animal Moreover, Charles Sanders Peirce considered sens-whether pictures, sounds, odors, textures, words (or corae (as in art, political power, or progras, not in their abstraction but in the concreteness of their participation in our lives and work

Mee is derived from experience

But he was not sure that the saic or mathematics If we define experience as self- constitutive practical activity, whose output is the ever-changing identity of the individual or individuals carrying out the experience, logic derives froic not outside thought, but in experience, and raises the question of logical replication Dawkins defined the replicator as a biologicalable to make copies of itself” Such an entity is supposed to have fecundity, fidelity, longevity Language is a replicator; or better yet, it is a replicative medium The question is whether duplication can take place only by virtue of its own structural characteristics, or whether one has to consider logic, for instance, as the rule of replication Moreover, ic itself is replicative in nature

This discussion belongs to the broader subject of memetics Its implicit assuenes, are subject to mechanisms of evolution As opposed to natural evolution, nitude, and faster by far

In experiences of cultural transfer (sharing of experience as a practical experience itself) or of inheritance-genetic or ene ofwas suspected to exist Were it to exist, that would not nification is carried over through memetic replication, but that practical experiences of hu under the guise of various logics pertinent to sign processes

Replication is, then, not of infor being one of thes to cultural evolution

Meme mutation and spread of a reduced scale, such as the scale of finite artificial languages and liical rules, can be described in equations sies, it is doubtful that we could encode the resulting complexity in such formalizations

Be this as it nification, the fundaic, are endoith replicative qualities Logic prevents corruption, or at least providesit The easiest way to understand this statement is to relate it to the many replications involved in the e announcing corruption of data corresponds to a replication process that went astray Like all analogies, this one is not infallible: a certain logic, against whose rules the replication is tested, ht simply prove to be inadequate to processes of replication that are different in nature Indeed, if the logic implicit in the experience of literacy were to authenticate semiotic processes characteristic of the civilization of illiteracy, the Error e of corruption would overrun theand all that defines virtuality pertain to a logical framework that is by no means a ical syste in the brain's neuronal structure, as a pattern of pits on a CD- ROM, or in an HTML (hypertext e) Web for minds correspond to a different dynamic realm, the realm of their reciprocal identification

Book Three

Language as Mediating Mechanism

Mention the word mediation today, or post it on the Internet

Swars mediation has acquired over time, dispute resolution is the practical activity that has appropriated the word Nevertheless, in its etyy, mediation attests to experiences that pre-date lawyers as they pre- date the earliest atte with heuristics, is definitory of the human species From all we know, nature is a realm of action and reaction The realm of human activity implies a third element, an in-between, be this a tool, a word, a plan This applies to primitive experiences of self-constitution, as well as to current e activities: mediation of mediation ad infinitum In each mediation there is the potential for further mediation That is, the inserted third can be divided in turn A lever used to move a very heavy object can be supplemented by another one, or two or more, all applied to the task at hand

Each tool can progressively evolve into a series of tools Each individual called upon to mediate can call upon others to perform a chain of related or unrelated e Mediation is the practical experience of reducing to eable size a task that is beyond the abilities of an individual or individuals identified through the task Mediation is a her scale of complexity to a scale that the persons involved in a task can handle This chapter will examine various phases of e and, subsequently, literacy providefunctions More important, ill define the conditions that require er adequate

Since tools, in their uns, language, artificial languages, and progra entities

What distinguishes these from tools is their caoability for self-replication They are, astheir identity in semiotic processes, subject to evolutionary cycles structurally similar to those of nature Their evolution is, as we know, enetic ed relatively little, while theelements that substantially contributed to the increase in human efficiency underwent er evolutionary, but revolutionary, and round for pragmatic discontinuity The moments of discontinuity correspond to threshold values in the scale of huies as dynamatic framework

The power of insertion