If semiotics is the generalization of linguistics, defining and encompassing all signs and symbols as they are expressed through various mediums, then the web is the perfection of the shift from linguistic based content to content created through all mediums.
Semiotics establishes a broader set of tools to communicate with, changing our understanding of what language is used to accomplish. Encompassing all forms of expression, whether they are sensory or semantic, semiotics explains a growing taste for and yet a removal from traditional narratives.
To be clear, what I’m suggesting is that the Internet, and its ability to provide access to various content, has become so successful that those using it continue to crave more and more. Although, their cravings are bottomless, their stomachs are not. They must make choices, decide when to stop consuming and when to move on to the next meal. Our behavior and tolerance for long works is diminished not because we are lazy, but because we crave so much. And yet, perhaps we do not crave the content we consume. Perhaps, we crave the opportunity to consume, valuing the medium we access above the content it provides.
Charles Sanders Peirce’s defines semiosis as, “action, or influence, which is, or involves, a cooperation of three subjects, such as a sign, its object, and its interpretant, this tri-relative influence not being in any way resolvable into actions between pairs.” (“Pragmatism”, Essential Peirce 2: 411; written 1907). He even developed a formula to define the possible relationships between elements, a formula that provided an extraordinary amount of possibilities based on the variables potentially present in an artifact, that number is 3 to the tenth. Each interpretant acts as a sign, creating a new signifying relation. This formula predicts and evidences the possibilities and complications of a system with access to all forms of expression, complicating and now obfuscating the role of the fiction writer in creating works that illuminate the human condition.
Things grow more complicated when looking at modern definitions of signs or signifiers. For Saussure, the sign means nothing in relation to its meaning. That is, the sign is arbitrary. No word (lets say object) is inherently meaningful; rather, an object is only a “signifier,” containing meaning only when it is combined in the mind with the signified – its intended meaning. When we engage in discovering meaning from a text, we synthesize physical stimuli into words and other abstract concepts– something we call “meaning.”
Barthes was the genius who defined this idea using cultural objects. Instead of wine, let’s use a glass of beer. The beer, a frothy white foam resting atop an amber liquid, containing alcohol, represents just that, a beer. Culturally, however, that sign takes on new meaning. Instead of seeing our cultural definition as provided by a bourgeois populace, let’s suggest that advertising is now a substitute for the bourgeois. Culturally, advertisers have created a definition for beer. The beer now signifies many things, a refreshing beverage on a hot day, people who like to party, people who like sports, people who kill people while driving cars. We establish ideal perceptions of objects rather than allow the truth of those objects to take center stage in our minds. The imagination is employed more distinctly in our conceptualization of our signs. A black cat is not a feline species with black hair; it is a bad omen.
We acquire these definitions and these signs change over the development and shifting cultural values of a changing populace. This is especially interesting when thinking of the epistemological shifts, say from an oral tradition to a written one, from a written tradition to a visual one, and finally to a tradition where all mediums are gathered in one technology to produce a different mode of knowledge gathering and thinking. I’m of course speaking of the Internet, and its influence on the human mind, our new tendency to rely on multiple sources for information based on ease of use and the speed by which a sign is given meaning.
The speed and efficiency by which an idea is generated is of particular interest for those questioning the decline of old media and a shift to new media as a favored (at least in so far as it remains efficient, which encompasses not only speed but also access) platform. Defining the speed by which a sign is given meaning suggests too that we view this efficiency as artful. The art of delivering content that is transformed into thought and then given meaning is reliant, today, on the speed at which that is accomplished. The speed at which that is accomplished is of course dependent on massive potentialities, Peirce’s formula.
For instance, what are the common tools used to access information? Depending on the artist’s (content creator’s) target audience, variables such as familiarization with tools (web browsing), our instinctual actions (clicking a link, turning a page, noticing an image that supports a phrase) or our tendency to ignore, for the sake of speed, certain passages (skimming), are just a few poor examples of behaviors an artist must consider. If speed is important, so too is our ability to access the information we are consuming.
Where, intellectually, the above is far more fascinating because it focuses on the mind, its ideas, and the ways in which those ideas are formed. Delivery of content is now the focus. Postman and McLuhan see this, as do Ong and other relative geniuses noticing the influence of mediums on the messages produced by a culture. However, the new technologies evolving in our spaces for discourse have put new emphasis on the evolution of thought and the creation of meaning. More importantly, we are learning new rules and gathering them to establish a new art form.
More to come….
New Media Fiction 