Tamsyn Gilbert
William Cope
Reda Sadki
Jason Berg
Duane Searsmith.png "Rita van Haren")
Rita van Haren
Deidja Ngabo Alain Constant
Fazal Rizvi
Adam P Rusch
Heather A OchmanNew Learning’s Updates
On Cyber-Social Meaning: The Clause, Revised
Abstract
Much of the focus of recent discussion about the nature and social impact of computing has been on algorithmic processes that purport to imitate humans by their “artificial intelligence.” This has been to the neglect of semantic processes managed by computers, and these are particularly powerful because their scope and effects are so different from human intelligence. The semantic processes that we examine in this article radically extend the limitations of natural language, long-term memory, and the range of sensitivity of the human sensorium. To make its case, the article takes as its reference point some semantic primitives, expressed in traditional grammar as nouns, adjectives, verbs, and prepositions. Parsing these semantic datum points in computer-mediated meaning, we find emerging a new alliance of the social and the mechanical, a human–machine symbiosis that we call “cyber-social meaning.” This has the potential to change our human meaning capacities as much as literacy did at the time of its emergence, whether for better or for worse. The result is a frame of meaning that subsumes and in some respects supersedes natural language, that grounds representation in the material, and that for practical purposes turns semantics into an ontological question.
- Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis, "On Cyber-Social Meaning: The Clause, Revised,” International Journal of Communication and Linguistic Studies, 21(2):1-18, 2023, doi: https://doi.org/10.18848/2327-7882/CGP/v21i02/1-18.
Full Text:
Are we facing a new concept of universal?
// With the universal, global, translingual phenomenon that is cyber-social meaning, humans have transcended the limits of natural language. //
Maybe this will improve the work with the conflicts between the discourses?
OBS: the editor is not publishing the quotes.
Yes, in a way we think we are, Rodrigo - then what are the social and political implications?
Bill,
I think that the theory of transpositions has gained significance with the perspective of the cyber-social meaning.
The discussion about semantics relating to cyber-social, while algorithm relates to Artificial Intelligence is also important to note.
Great conclusion with the proposal of a Political Economy of Cyber-Social Meaning. We have extraordinary potential in the face of the possibility of distributing sociability. However, the business model of the big techs seems to have led societies to very obscure places. But since we are in history, we can change that. Freud explains, but he does not provide affordances to make this change. We need to do that.
Absolutely, Rodrigo! We have our work cut out...