>Language to me does not have an arbitrary relationship with the world
>itself, but we have an arbitrary relationship with the world. Language
>shows/forms/explains how we see and deal with the world (and how we
>think about it, of course). In that sense the relationship between
>computers (and their code) with the world should be closely related to
>the relationship between humans and the world. We create that language
>and that code.
-----
I thought the whole point of semiotics, and all the structuralist and
post-structuralist theory since then, was that that language does have an
arbitrary relationship with the world. As you say, we create language (we
are then re-created by language too) and our relationship with the world
(and each other) is arbitrary...thus language also has an arbitrary
relationship with the world.

That doesn't mean that there is no mapping...language is a representational
system and as such "maps" to things in some fashion. I don't need to
explain this here...we have all read our "Structuralism for Boys and Girls".

The question is how this influences our discussion regarding technologies,
networks and representational systems that are language based (as all
things digital are)? One of the most exciting things about the late 80's
and early 90's was the manner in which the gulf between post-structuralist
(Euro-Romanticism) thought on the one hand and Cybernetic (Anglo-Saxon
Positivism) thought on the other was crossed by a group of artists and
theorists struggling to contextualise what was going on with new media art.
Until then there had been this two world thing, but since then this has
been diminishing. I am not saying that there are no die-hards in the two
old camps of opinion, but they are becoming more and more isolated. The
positive outcome of this has been a "mainstreaming" of many of the issues
which we are now discussing (mainstreaming in the sense that a list such as
CRUMB is composed of many representing mainstream institutions) and thus a
broadening out of the arguments to a more inclusive process of
contextualisation. As such, the debate is leaving the ghetto.

If that all sounds very general and unfocused it is because it is (or at
least my perception of it). The debate we are having now has been going on
for at least 20 or so years (and before that...I just don't remember that
far back). The people involved have changed (though some remain the same),
list-serves have functioned to accelerate the discourse, thus the context
and import of the argument has changed. I am not at all sure what that all
means, but it seems generally a good thing to me.

In an essay titled "Sentient Sign" (1993, available on my site) I argued
that things, and computers too, are not only to there be used or to be
exchanged but also function as signs, as elements in language. I was trying
to argue that whilst computers are themselves complex language machines
and, in a profound sense, an act of writing in themselves they can also be
regarded as singular language acts, as signs. I was also seeking to
establish what it was that computers are significant of. I think I still
agree with what I wrote then when arguing that the computers primary
referent is the human. So, if you will allow me, it follows that in the
creation and use of the computer (and its related technologies) we are
primarily concerned with how to represent the human and the diffusion of
the results.

However, as stated above, the relation between signs and things, between
language and the world, is arbitrary. This implies that whilst computers
can be seen as significant of the human they should also be seen as
arbitrarily so and thus whilst there is a mapping, a morphosis, between
these things it is only a contingent and temporary one. That is, the
computers value as a sign is not absolute but relative, not permanent but
temporary. This argument is implied in Sentient Sign, and can be
elucidated, with the example of the "clock-work universe" world-view
popular in the early enlightment.

In this world the role of the computer was equivalent by the clock-work
mechanism, where such devices were used to model the universe, the solar
system, the natural world and (in the form of mechanised dolls) the human.
It was a totalising vision and as we know it was wrong. I have always
assumed that the same totalising characteristics that exist on our own
culture (the digital world view, all is language, etc) will also one day
come to be seen as naively wrong.

I wrote the Sentient Sign before I was concious of what the internet would
become. Would I have written it differently now? I think so, even though I
still agree with the main point I was making. I would not have been able to
ignore the impact the net has had on the general field of computing and
computer-useage. So, Josephine's attempt to distinguish between the net and
computing is valuable in potentially illuminating some of those pursuant
issues, although I feel that any heirarchical value she seeks to place upon
them can only be subjective and of relevance only within a Dietzian TAN.

;)

best

Simon





Simon Biggs

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http://www.littlepig.org.uk/
The Great Wall of China @ http://www.greatwall.org.uk/
Babel @ http://www.babel.uk.net/

Research Professor (Digital Media)
Art and Design Research Centre
School of Cultural Studies
Sheffield Hallam University
Sheffield, UK
http://www.shu.ac.uk/