During the last twenty years, computer technology has undergone an explosive development. From being a professional challenge to engineers, the computer has developed into a medium among other media in information society – in fact, a super medium that incorporates many other media. Gunnar Liestøl's chapter discusses this fact in the context of academic interactive publishing, and there are many other fields of application. We use email instead of traditional paper-based mail, we enter virtual classrooms instead of taking the train to participate in a weekend course, and our children play computer games together with their friends instead of reading books about cowboys and Indians. Very soon we will exchange the videotape and video recorder for a CD-ROM player connected to our combined television/computer, so that we do not have to passively watch old films but can actively engage in the film making ourselves. But “Powerful media technology is meaningless without content.” Unfortunately “In the area of interactive motion video, the embryonic technology is already outrunning creativity” (Larry Press in Communication of the ACM. Vol. 32, no 7. 1989: 788).

Expressions like “interactive fiction,” “multimedia,” and “virtual reality” are becoming familiar. With the new technology we can create simulations of possible and impossible worlds for people to enter and act in, being absorbed and fascinated by. But what kind of worlds? Soldiers can learn how to land an airplane or destroy a tank electronically.

Through the technological invention and utilization of computer mediated communication systems (CMC systems) in the domain of human linguistic interaction, the organization of electronic communities across time and space has been made possible. The choice to establish interactive communities exclusively on the basis of shared interest, background or task, has become available. Computer mediated communication systems, providing facilities for this human communication independent of time and place, represent a large and challenging interactive potential, as they entirely overcome many of the practical problems associated with the establishment of a traditional face-to-face communication.

Although the linguistic interaction practised in this type of electronic environment has already been stated generally to be posited somewhere between writing and speech, it is clear that it is not sufficient — or even correct — to characterize this communication, enabled by CMC systems, barely as “a written communication, facilitated electronically.” Such a characteristic does not identify the overall nature and conditions involved in this totally new type of linguistic interaction. Viewing communication as a multi-semiotic process (a process that uses a combination of various possible ways — verbal and non-verbal — of establishing meaning in a communication situation), and being aware that the communication of concern here is a process taking place using only one type of all the types of communication involved in the general multi-semiotic communicative process, it seems relevant to discuss and enlighten more thoroughly the various aspects and characteristics involved in the specific type of communication, unfolding itself in a conferencing system.

Profound changes have cut us off from the pre-bourgeois cultures. Indeed, the main criteria that are used to define European culture separate us from the culture of earlier periods. Changes set in at the beginning of the bourgeois period that were so radical and have since become so well-established that we often lose sight of the fact that they were the results of a historical development. I am thinking here of the dynamisation of culture that took place in the middle of the eighteenth century as a result of the beginning industrialisation in Europe. Literature, art and philosophy offer countless illustrations of the European time shock.

There were three main effects of this process of dynamization. First, the concept of personality was dynamized. Where previously individuals had been regarded in terms of their absolute relationship to God, they were now also seen in terms of their relationship to themselves. Where previously they had been regarded as members of a community, they were now regarded as separate elements subject to the laws of development. Secondl, society itself came to be regarded as dynamic; where previously it had been analyzed in terms of such concepts as change and modification, it was now understood on the basis of such concepts as transformation and development. And finally, nature came to be regarded as dynamic.

Such changes clearly complicate the way a culture views itself considerably. There is a tendency for cultural and literary critics to regard modern cultural and literary expressions as outpourings of regret that this dynamization took place.

Computer technology is a meaningful technology, a technology that, in line with the considerable social resources that have been expended on technological innovation and automation in recent decades, has come to play an increasingly meaningful role in a high-technology society. Thus, as early as 1983, the computer had become so meaningful that Time (1/3/83) awarded it the prize normally given to the man or woman of the year. So, computer technology is meaningful, full of meanings. What the computer actually means, however, to our society, our culture and our consciousness, has not yet been evaluated.

It is this field of mediation, linking technology and the process of meaning, linking computers and culture, that is the subject of this chapter. The main focus is on the title Computer culture while, conversely, the subtitle The meaning of technology and the technology of meaning is intended as a kind of puzzle picture that changes its meaning, according to the point of view one adopts: On the one hand, The meaning of technology is designed to show, as indicated earlier, that we are dealing with an extremely important and meaningful technology: information technology or computer technology, which is precisely a technology that is charged with meaning. On the other hand, The meaning of technology is supposed to imply a humanistic and culturo-analytical approach to technology, an approach that places the emphasis on terms such as meaning, systems of meaning, and the production of meaning, and that primarily addresses the question of the actual, cultural meaning of technology, in the sense of the meaning-creating processes and structures that technology forms part of, and the various cultural concepts that attempt to create meaning through technology.

The authors of this chapter were involved in designing and constructing a multimedia system about the Scandinavia Bronze Age (on other ideas for multimedia applications in archaeology, see Chapter 12). The system was an advanced prototype, but near completion enough for us to be able to set it up in the museum and test user reactions. One of us was responsible for the graphics, the other for design and programming.

The system is implemented in Supercard 1.5. The design is complete, but at present the system only contains information about 70 items. It was tested at the local museum for a week. Two observers surveyed the users from an adjoining room; in addition, visitors to the museum guests were asked to fill in a questionnaire, and tape-recorded interviews were made on the spot. The system is in 8-bit color, so the black/white screen dumps in this section give only a partial impression of the real system.

The main system is for browsing and consists of four windows:

1. (1) A Map of Denmark and southern Sweden displaying locations of excavation sites.

2. (2) An imaginary Landscape. A drawing depicting an artist's view of how Bronze Age man might have viewed nature and society.

3. (3) A Color Photo window displaying color photos of archaeological finds.

4. (4) A Verbal Information window, with texts explaining the contents of the landscape and the photo window. The window also contains sound: the written texts are spoken, and the window provides samples of Bronze Age music.

It is obvious that “symbolic machines” determine a larger and larger part of ordinary life in the kind of social reality we are beginning to experience and to prepare for; it should be just as obvious that this situation calls for a revision of our semiotic “common sense,” the kind of conceptual standards with which we meet our compact social challenges. Neither the interpretative semiotics based on the Peircean tradition (such as Eco 1976), nor the structural semiotics of the Saussurean tradition (such as Greimas 1976) – though both are necessary – seem sufficient to follow up the substantial change induced by the on-going implementation of these machines in our “life world,” probably for the very simple reason that even these often rather sophisticated semiotic elaborations fail to see what a “symbolic machine” actually is and what it can do. This chapter will be devoted to considerations and theoretical work that may prepare the way for at least a partial updating or restating of some of the fundamental issues involved in this dilemma.

On technical objects and machines

If we consider machines as “technical objects,” the semiotic status of this type of objects would be worth considering. I take it to be something like the following. There is a subject actant S and there is a domain of objects D, defined by an intentional relation S-D. S is “doing something” concerning D.

In the field of interactive fiction the concept of interaction is not just pertinent; it is crucial. An apparently trivial but nonetheless important problem arises every time we talk about interactive fiction. We do not know what to call the “user” of the system. It does not feel right to say that one is using a piece of fiction. So we sometimes say reader instead. But since we are mostly working with pictures and even with animation, it might be better to say viewer. But again there is something wrong. A reader and a viewer are physically passive, while a user of a computer system is active, by definition.

The problem of understanding what happens when people interact with computer systems is not a new one, nor is it specific to interactive fiction. In the history of traditional systems development and interface design, the problem has been tackled by the use of different metaphors. Although these metaphors have been fruitful within the context of non-fiction systems, they are part of a dysfunctional metaphorical inheritance that we must, if not get rid of, then at least try to transform into something workable. When we talk about interactive media, we are in fact stuck with at least three inherited and very different metaphors: a dialogue partner, a tool, and a media metaphor.

The written genres of academic communication have evolved and consolidated ever since the founding of Plato's Academy. The conventions, structures, and rhetoric of academic writing and publication have gradually adapted to various technologies and requirements. With the quality of current computer technology, academia is faced with a complex and flexible medium, offering radical extensions to the handling of knowledge and information. It is yet uncertain what consequences this transition will have upon academic communication, but they are likely to be significant.

Experience and knowledge originate after the events, after their objects or entities have appeared and established themselves as subject matters. The title of this chapter suggests a synthesis of hypermedia communication and academic discourse that is in many ways still in its infancy. Consequently the reflections put forward here are speculations prior to the events rather than direct analysis of existing practise. But given the fact that few innovations are radically new or alien to the hosting environment — more a conglomerate of old and new — a certain level of understanding might be deduced in advance. The lack of existing examples of the relationship between this new form of media and established academic convention, unfortunately, means that this chapter can only be exploratory and tentative, and must therefore involve a high level of abstraction. What follows are projections and extrapolations prefacing events to come. The purpose of this is to attempt to identify some possibilities and problems relevant in the evolution of hypermedia.

While Part I of this volume presents semiotic approaches to design and analysis of computer systems, focusing on the internal workings of the machine and the computer-based signs, and Part II deals with interactive composition and aesthetic form, especially the aesthetics and rhetoric of interactive fiction, focusing on man-machine interaction, interface-design and the concept of interactivity, Part III is devoted to the analysis of computers in context. In taking up computers in this perspective, we are seeking to discuss a set of issues on yet another level of concern – those wider social, cultural, historical, and organizational conditions and circumstances within which computers and the use of computers are located and made meaningful. The term context thus serves to direct attention, on the one hand to the conditioning forces and frames that constitute and regulate the production, circulation and use of computer technology, and on the other hand to the social and cultural situation or environment that computer technology by the same production, circulation, and use affects and sets its mark on.

Computer technology undoubtedly plays an increasingly important role in culture and society. On the basis of large-scale developments in micro-electronics and software design during the past decades, computer technology has established itself as the dominating social technology for communication, storage, processing, and production of data, information, and meaning. What this means, however, has not yet been established.

The standard communication model analyses communication into five main elements: A sender encodes a message into a signal, transmits the signal through a noisy channel that may distort parts of the signal before it arrives at the receiver who decodes the signal and hopefully retrieves the original message.

In semiotic terms we can translate signal by expression/signifier and message by content/signified. The assumption is that the signified “glue” to the signifier; although it is the signifier that gets transmitted, the signified rides along with it and can be unpacked at the end of the transmission line.

When applied to actual communication, this assumption turns out to be inadequate. The actual interpretation of the “signal” seems to rely more on the context of communication than on the signal received, so the idea of “decoding the signified” explains very little in actual conversations.

Qvortrup's chapter on organization theory replaces the five standard elements by new concepts, two of which are perturbation and self-maintenance. The purpose of this note is to suggest how they can be applied more concretely to communication analysis with a point of departure in catastrophe theory (CT) (see “A Semiotic Approach to Programming”).

The main aim of this chapter is to argue that semiotics can serve as a theoretical framework for programming computer systems (on semiotic approaches to systems design, see Rasmussen, 1986; Kaasbøll, 1986; Nadin, 1988; Holmqvist & Bøgh Andersen, 1991; Bøgh Andersen, 1990a; Figge, 1991; Boland, 1991; Stamper, 1992). The reason is that although computers are machines, they are not ordinary machines, assembled with bolts and screws. They are symbolic machines constructed and controlled by means of signs.

The interface of the systems is an obvious example of a computer-based sign, but underneath the interface, in the intestines of the system, we also find signs. The system itself is specified by a program text (a sign since it stands for the set of possible program executions to the programmer). The actual execution involves a compiler or interpreter that directly or indirectly controls the computer by means of the program text, and since the compiler is based on a text standing for the set of permissible program texts, a part of the compiler is a meta-sign that – in some versions – very much resembles ordinary grammar.

If we continue this descent through the different layers of the system, passing through the operating system and the assembly code down to the actual machine code, we will come across signs most of the way down.

This part presents semiotic approaches to the design and analysis of computer systems. Theoretically, the five chapters range from classical structuralist methodology to new developments in catastrophe theoretical semantics to Peircean traditions. The programming paradigms include object-oriented programming, functional programming, and logic programming.

The chapters by Peter Bøgh Andersen, David Piotrowski, and Per Hasle establish semiotic frameworks for programming. Per Aage Brandt's chapter is concerned with the new kinds of semioses emerging in human-computer interaction, and Keld Gall Jørgensen discusses computer intelligence from a Peircean point of view.

I compare the approaches and coverage of the five chapters by discussing the problem of meaning and machines. The problem that has engaged philosophers like John Searle and Daniel Dennett is the following: Can computers be said to contain and process meaning, or do they just contain and process empty syntactical expression to which humans assign a content?

The concrete point of departure is the following simple fact: Through keyboard or mouse we can input data into the computer, which responds by writing or drawing on the screen or activating the loudspeaker. The input and output are assigned a meaning and thus form a composite sign. Meaning is produced, but how and by whom?

Most of the chapters in this book consider computer systems from a specific point of view – as media or as sign systems. The primary purpose guiding the composition of the book has been to present various theoretical frameworks for working within this perspective.

Computer technology does not lend itself readily to definition. It is made up of many strands and trends, like an optical illusion that changes shape according to the point of view adopted. The central idea of the book is to establish computer systems as media – as intermediate technological agencies that permit communication and as such are used for transmission of information, conversations, requests, entertainment, education, expression of emotional experiences, and so on. Therefore the analogies and metaphors we use for describing and coming to terms with computer systems are not drawn from the domain of machines or tools – as is frequently the case – but from the realm of media (film, theater, television, telephone, books, comics, cartoons, and so on).

But a computer is not just a mediwm in the simple sense of a television set, a radio, a telephone. On the contrary, a computer is an extremely flexible and polymorphous medium. It is a multi-medium since the same physical machine can serve as host for a variety of previously independent media-functions: It can simultaneously be an electronic mail system, a word processor, a database, a tool for advanced design, a paint box, a calculator, an electronic book, and a game-machine.

The computer was developed as a tool for handling large amounts of informations and for performing complicated calculations. But since the middle of the 1980s, when the personal computer came within the reach of ordinary people, the computer has taken over a wide range of functions, such as word processing, designing, book keeping, information handling, communication, and so on. From being a tool the computer has become a medium.

It is characteristic of other media that they are normally used for both commercial and artistic purposes, in what seems to be some kind of division of labour. On the one hand, the commercial products extend the market and inspire technical innovations for mass production. On the other hand, the artistic productions explore the medium, extend the language used and invent new ways of looking at the world. That is true of the, literature and a modern medium, such as the video. We have advertising and other commercial videos, art videos, and in between we have the music videos. Sometimes they are purely commercial products aiming at promoting a record, but they can also be very artistic productions, where the images are an integrated part of the music.

This dichotomy between entertainment and art is only one dimension of another dichotomy – the one between fact and fiction, or as I prefer to call it, faction – since we are dealing with the presentation of facts in media (mediated facts), not with actual facts.

Introduction

The contention that animal classifications are intrinsically social [e.g. Douglas, 1966; Leach, 1964; Tambiah, 1969], and which finds its immediate historical legitimation in the Durkheimian theory of knowledge [Durkheim and Mauss, 1963], has been strongly criticised by those persuaded by a more universalist–evolutionist position. These latter argue, in effect, that a type of classification exists which is, for all intents and purposes, independent of the rest of culture and society, conditioned primarily by objective features of the natural world and pan-human cognitive structures of the mind. Some [Hunn, 1977b: 61], in support of this, have noted that Durkheim and Mauss had themselves distinguished between ‘technological’ and social classification, the former being clearly distinguished from speculative beliefs linked to social structure. Such a distinction, of course, is an important article of faith, because if it were not so, many of the generalisations about the pan-human character of classification would be undermined. My own view, which has emerged and consolidated during the years in which I have been engaged in the Nuaulu research programme, is that no firm distinction between mundane and social can be sustained; that the place of certain animals in otherwise essentially mundane biological classifications cannot be explained purely in terms of appearance and behaviour, but must take account of cultural presentation and representation. Animals and plants, therefore, in this sense, can never be morally neutral; while it is inconceivable that classification might proceed in a way which, to use Geertz's felicitous phrase, ‘externalises culture’.