THE FUNDAMENTAL REALITY OF TEXT

Dr. Laurence J. Victor , P.O. Box 85520, Tucson, AZ 85754-5520

 

Proceedings of the 38th Annual Meeting, 
International Society for the Systems Sciences, Asilomar, CA. 
June 14-19, 1994. pages 909-932.

ABSTRACT

It is proposed that text be considered as a fundamental reality. Text, is partly defined, as material structure, capable of cognitive interpretation into meaning. The material domain (of organized matter and energy) is the substrate for text, as well as the substrate (in neural-molecular patterns) for mind and meanings. Yet, all that we know is embedded in text, which must be elevated in fundamental reality considerations on par with the material and mental, not merely derivative of them. The mind/body issue must be expanded to consider a third contestant: text. All records are text. The empirical base of science is text (patterns in data), and not the external observed world.
In addition to having deep epistemological and ontological implications, the "reality of text" has immediate practical application. Human actions are strongly influenced by text: holy books, constitutions and records, histories and news reports, designs, instructions, project management software. Social-political actions can be viewed as efforts of text creation and transformation. Democracy may be viewed as open collaborative text creation and editing. Worldmaking can be viewed as a cyclical scripting/performing process. Creating better tools for augmenting collaborative text manipulation is necessary for human survival.
Keywords: text, worldmaking, language, reality, democracy, interpretation, practical

 

WORK IN PROGRESS

Please view this as work in progress, rough order emerging from chaos. It is not a product of disciplined scholarship or scientific rigor. I cite few references, as I have lost track of the catalysts for many of these ideas. You may notice that some of what I say appears naive, that I seem unaware that others have devoted much more attention to exploration and explication. I would be very grateful if you would call my attention to these. On the other hand, don't be too quick to shove what I say into convenient old niches, or you may miss what is new. Although this was not intentionally composed as anti-communication a la Herbert Brun [4], I hope it will tease you into shifting paradigms as much as it communicates to your accepted paradigms.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND REFERENCES

An extension of the term "text", as used in this document, can be found in Jay David Bolter's Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext and the History of Writing, [3]. Although the present vogue for "cyberspace" and "virtual reality" are visual (and sensory), the earlier versions (MUDS) were purely textual (in the narrow sense), and the sensory stimuli outputted from the computer are designed to be interpreted. The enabling power of visual texts in creating social systems is documented in Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier [15]. The studies in "semiotics", which I have only briefly skimmed, seem also to be pushing the boundaries of text. I have not studied in depth the works of the natural language philosophers or students of hermeneutics, but I have become aware, recently, that we share common concerns.

 
 

PHILOSOPHICAL AND SYSTEMS ISSUES OF TEXTUAL REALITY

A perennial issue in Systems Thinking is "Where are the systems?". Are they "out there" in an external universe, to be discovered and observed? Are they an artifact of our scientific processes; but if so, are they not structured in our brains? Or, have we evolved so that we have systems thinking tools to observe and study systems? Or, more radically, that WE and the WHOLE co-evolved, according to some anthropic principles, so that "systems" is the fundamental unit of both reality and analysis?
As I shall demonstrate shortly, ALL that we do and think is in the context of languaging, and - more concretely - in the perception of, interpretation of, composing, and responding to "text". I generalize "text" as a material structure, capable of cognitive interpretation into meaning. This is a highly empirical perspective.
The "message" in text is the true invariant. We can relax in treating "text" as the "external reality", the "structures by which we couple" in the Autopoietic theories of Maturana and Varela [9]. We can never return to the same observation, but we MUST ASSUME that when we return to read again the same passage, it is unchanged. We may have changed between readings, the conditions of perception may have changed, but the message (the patterns of marks on a page) have not changed - by definition.
Actually, today there is a very real crisis in establishing the authenticity of data, specifically in digitized form. [1] Yet, this is a practical issue, for we can assume that if data is altered, it is done so by intent. And, intent is also the primary factor in our scientific processes, which are part and parcel of our social and cultural processes. But, our records of ALL this are in text; which brings us back to ourselves and our texts. This philosophical perspective may not be experienced as "clean" and "elegant", but I hope to show that it is a very practical perspective in these days of crisis.


 

1. EXERCISE IN GUIDED COGNITION

Today, a popular exercise is guided imagery. What follows in analogous to those exercises, except that I want the words to guide you through a variety of cognitive experiences, some imagery, others beyond imagery.
As a footnote of possible relevance, the author of this document lacks mental imagery in all sensory modes.
Look around you. Let your attention come to rest or focus on different things, different features of things, different feelings you have in your body. Can you attend to anything that can't be named? Try!! All figures of explicit conscious attention in the experiential gestalt are capable of being categorized, and that category named. We may not know the accepted name, but we know it could have a name. That "mark on the paper" is a "squiggle". That is an "unidentifiable object".
Although much of what we experience cannot be effectively communicated with language; whatever we do experience is done so in the context of languaging. Perceiving and languaging co-develop.
"A picture is worth a thousand words". Sometimes. If you were challenged to duplicate a wall in your home or office so that it would be very difficult to tell the original from the copy, you would do it best using photographs. It would be almost impossible if you had to record everything about the original in words. On the other hand, there is much of high significance in our lives that requires language to think on, let alone communicate about. Language isn't perfect for this, but it is essential.
Imagine a sequence of video clips, without speech, that would communicate the interdependence of issues of ecology, employment, and excess profits. This is possible, but it could be much more efficiently communicated in words.
I'm not sure that the mind/body issue could ever be shared without languaging. Look at your hand. Sketch an outline of your hand on a piece of paper, and look at the sketch. Print the letters H-A-N-D on the paper and look at the word. Say the word aloud and listen to it. Four different perceptions, that involve the experience we associate in language with the meaning of "hand". I propose that in some way, all four different perceptions have something in common. I want to label that hypothesized to exist in the external physical world associated with this commonality: "TEXT".
"Text" is a material structure, capable of cognitive interpretation into meaning. The shape of the hand, and the sketch of the hand, are both "text", in that they are cognitively associated with a common "meaning" "hand". At this point, hold back your request that I define "meaning"; treat it as a primitive for the moment. The visual pattern of the printed word HAND, and the acoustic pattern of the spoken word, although quite different, yield the same experiential meaning. Think briefly on the psychological and learning processes involved for this to be.

 

a) "TEXT" DEFINED:

Text is a material structure, capable of cognitive interpretation into meaning.
A printed page of letters, word, sentences, etc. is our exemplar; but there are many variations. Certain relevant spatial relations between physical components of a text are invariant to many transformations of the material substrate of the text, or media. Like size and shape constancies in perception, there are similar distortions of the text that keep the message and its interpretation invariant.
The "message" is the "perceived" pattern of the text that is interpreted. Although meaning is an aspect of the mental, and implies languaging processes (for the interpretation of messages), text can be graphical and pictorial. The pattern of the shape of a dog (real or in a photograph) is perceived and interpreted as much as the shapes of the letters DOG are perceived and interpreted.
The cognitive interpretation of text "takes time". For fixed text, as words on this page, the eye scans the text, processing the patterns, and the mind/brain interprets them into meanings. The text is assumed not to physically change when we read. Some text has temporal aspects embedded in it, as the motions of sign languages, sequences of phonemes in speech, and interpretable actions viewed from a video tape, or speech from an audio tape. In these cases, the STRUCTURE of the text has a temporal component; but it is fixed (in the same manner that the spatial structure in ordinary text is fixed) for interpretation.
All text with temporal components can be stored in structures without temporal components; for example, the tape and the tape playback system. Whether the term "text" will gain popular usage with this expanded meaning, or another term is used, will not be my choice. I choose, in this document, to use "text" in this expanded sense.

 

b) THREE RELEVANT ENVIRONMENTS

Consider three relevant , hypothesized external environments that effect your behavior and experience.
You move about in a hypothesized external world of surfaces reflecting or emitting light (with gradients and edges). This same external world can stimulate our other senses: sounds, smells, tastes, feels. When we were young, we learned to navigate in this world, gaining some control over what experiences we would have next. We learned to categorize and name the "things" we attended to. We learned to produce behavioral sequences, that when perceived by others, could lead the others to perceptually experience surfaces "represented" by our behavior.
We might imagine ourselves learning this, even if we were the only human alive, cared for by affectionate automata that also instructed us in languaging as related to what we experienced. Evolution led to beings whose biological structures and processes were tuned to those surfaces relevant to their survival, as well as some vestigial perceptual-motor systems from earlier survival needs.
Let us label this the "physical" environment. We learned to navigate in and manipulate this physical environment before we learned the social and cultural meanings of most things. Later in life, although our experiences now contained (at least potentials for) names of things attended to, our actual motions are still mostly determined by conditioned responses to stimuli from the physical environment.
I propose that we don't have more carnage on the road because the moment to moment navigation of our cars is automatic subconscious response to this physical environment; only at a secondary level do we volitionally choose where and how we drive. Explore this idea.

 

Now, you encounter things (perceived from surfaces and other sensory stimulation) that you learn to associate with other people, like yourself. I won't attempt to detail that developmental process here. We inherit predispositions to seek out faces and eyes. We have developed special face recognition biological systems. For most of us, our attention is captured by other people if they are present; although we have also learned to resist this, at times; as when looking at a sunset or hearing a symphony in the presence of others.
We have biologically co-evolved with our basic social/cultural grouping (tribe, community) such that our patterns of perception and associated behavior with respect to others optimizes the survival of our grouping. There are many facial expressions and other nonverbal signals that are powerful in our interpersonal relations, most of which are perceived and responded to below consciousness.
In this evolutionary story, we also developed languaging abilities. Debates continue whether languaging developed initially to assist an organization of complex experiences (for thinking) and then later co-evolved with communication; or whether languaging first developed to make complex communication more effective and efficient, and was later used in "silent thought". And, there may well have been strong aesthetic and creative factors involved.
So, we also live and respond in an acoustic sea of spoken words, although, until recently, most speech was also visually perceived (we saw the speaker). Let us label this environment of and created by humans, the "human" environment, which always has physical environments as substrates. We will not be concerned here about the human created environment, when humans are absent, the "artifactual" environment - other than that the "textual" environment overlaps part of it.

 

Memory plays an important role in our living within both the physical and the human environments. Some of us have "mental imagery", the ability to experience - without perception either of these types of environments. Sometimes we experience remembrances, other times we imagine and even fantasize. Our experiences, whether perceptual or imagery, serve as a guide to our behavior (although there is also behavior that is not consciously performed).
In the classical perceptual-motor model, the distal stimuli leads to the proximal stimuli, that then modulates the experiential generator, leading to the functional stimuli, which then leads to actions. In radical constructivism, all our behavior must be attributed to our creative selves; our having no confirmable direct contact with an external world. Cognitive systems in the autopoietic theories of Maturana and Varela [9] are informationally closed; they interact through structural coupling.
Memories and imagery have led to anticipatory actions, taken not in response to stimuli or present environments. All movement is taken in the context of the perceived physical and human environments, but the source of our intentions may not be found there. But, memories and imagery are private and personal. Story tellers and singers could stimulate our imagery (and then action) by performing as to their memory and imagery. In this way, "text" began to have influence in human life and human evolution.

 

Try to imagine what life would be like, if there were no written text, or video and audio recording, and if everything we talked about had to have an immediate perceived referent. "Give me that cookie." "Wait, there, for me." "Dig a hole here." It may be that what is constraining chimp languaging is a restriction of their languaging to immediately perceived referents (or possibly with a immediately experienced image of something desired).
Language is used to organize our experiential world of attended-to-things in gestalts. As language evolved, the formalism permitted "words" to be used that did not have clear perceivable referents. We could carry this story further, but I want to shift now to the impact of recorded languaging. I don't want to limit it to written or printed visual languages -- for if the tape recorder had been around before the pen, we might have had quite a different history.
Imagine how much the text you have processed meaningfully has influenced your development and everyday behavior and thoughts. By "text" here, I mean to include the spoken words you heard and the visual graphics and photographs you viewed in magazines, films and tv. How have you been influenced by the books and other printed text you have read? How are you influenced by the "news" that you perceive daily? How have you been influenced by the stories told you by others, by the videos you have viewed, and by the novels you have read?
Sequences of actions can be guided by text, as in recipes for cooking and instructions for assembling a computer work station. We fill out our tax forms using text instructions, if we can comprehend them. Many of the rules for driving came to us first through text, even though the physical coordination developed relatively independent of text.
You plan to attend and deliver a paper at a conference. You learn about the conference through text. You apply, submit your abstract, arrange for travel and accommodations using text. You are guided from the airport to your hotel by text. You attend different sessions at the conference using text, and the proceedings of the conference are in text. The conversations with colleagues that are useful to you result from an exchange of text. Try imagining a being having the same sequences of sensory stimulations you experienced when attending the conference, but who had no languaging abilities for interpretation; that they were "blind" to the "text" embedded as information in the stimuli.
Using other terminology, it is the system of relationships between "associations" we make between "sensory patterns of stimuli" and something else (meaning) that makes our worlds real to us. Our belief systems are often grounded on texts, or holy books. Our constitutions and collected legal records are text. All scientific data are text, as are all reports of experiments and all textbooks - and lectures and educational video. The design of complex structures is done using text, from sketches and drawings, specifications of quantities, to the elaborate computer facilitated project management software and computer assisted design software. Our complex daily lives are guided by the text of our schedules.

 

Indeed, where are we not embedded in text? Remember the generalization of "text" as material structures capable of cognitive interpretation into meanings. When we drive a car through busy traffic, we are responding to text. We respond, not only to the patterns of light reflected from surfaces that guides our actions, but also to the interpretations of these patterns as cars, traffic lights, pedestrians, signs of various kinds, recognized shapes of familiar buildings, and the motion of cars in terms of their anticipated behaviors.
When we drive, we usually are not talking to ourselves about all that we see. But it is the interpretation and recognition of stimulus patterns that guide our actions, and these interpretations occur in the context of languaging. Thus, I propose that much of our behavior in relation to our physical environments is due to the interpretable in languaging "text" we "read" from the environment. Much of the same could probably be said of our behavior in relation to interpersonal interactions, it is interpretable behaviors that we notice and respond to, again, interpretable in the context of languaging.
Our "worlds" are dependent on our interpretation of text. In these worlds we take all text to have physical substrates, where at the same time, circularly, our hypotheses about physical realities is founded in our interpretation of text.

 

In our expanded definition of "text", it is obvious that not all text is created by humans; so it may be useful to distinguish between "natural" and "created" text. For example. A young child first is read stories about strange animals, and later sees drawings of these animals. When the child later visits a zoo, she will recognize the animals. The live animals, as distal stimuli cause unique patterns in the proximal stimuli, that lead to an interpretation of "zebra" or "giraffe". Language didn't create the live animals, but language did play a essential part in their recognition; and in that sense, the live animals serve as "text" for us. I can now trace the first catalyst for my thinking this way to my reading of Michel Foucault's The Order of Things [6].


 

2. MENTAL SYSTEMS

I make no claims of comprehending the swarm of ideas around the attractor, "MIND". Whatever its prevailing mysteries, we cannot shove it aside as of secondary importance. "Meaning" is in the domain of "mind", which we will continue to take here as an unexamined primitive. It is easier to speak of text and interpretation in the physical/biological/psychological models of brains and cognition. What follows are some metaphorical ramblings in homage to the importance of "mind".
How can we relate to mind without grounding ourselves in the material world of the brain or the worlds of text? Is this what we want? May it not be that each of the three fundamental domains of reality: material, mental, and textual are "rooted" in the interaction of the other two?
What is this domain of the mental? What are its' components? Experientials, qualia, meanings, ideas, feelings, thoughts, meta-cognitions? How are they related to each other in the Experiential Here & Now (EH&N)?
I think of "ideas" as living beings [21], in an evolving ecology of ideas. Ideas can grow and develop, fission and fuse, organize and transform in nested hierarchies (Koestler's holarchies), evolve and emerge. My EH&N is a screen upon which are projected some outputs from this living and evolving world/ecology of ideas. I can imagine them as holographic, cellular-automata-like-resonances on the neural-molecular substrate of the body; but that is just their material correlate.
Another by-product of this world of living ideas are the marks I am making at this moment, textual correlates to partial aspects of ideas. When we read or listen to or compose discourse on the nature of mind, brain, and text, we are experiencing it in the EH&N.
I sense that the essence of mind and meaning transcends the content of the experiential, or at least most of it. Some of the underlying nature of mind may be experienced as background to the content. The limitations of human thought, the vast cultural differences over time and space, the newness of humans and human languaging among a great variety of other life forms - all these make me humble and resist arrogance that I, or we humans, are experiencing the full essence of mind.
What is there about MUSIC that transcends any specific musical composition and all vibratory systems that perform music? What is there about LANGUAGE that transcends any specific message and all text? This is MIND.
It has analogies with media and substance - it is what other things are made of. MIND is the "substance" of the experiential, not the specific forms experienced (content). In modern science, we have reduced substance to deeper forms and processes. Is that important here? However, the contents of mind, the details of the experiential here and nows, are also in the mental domain. They may have textual and neural-molecular correlates, but they are also REAL, forms of mind: meanings.


 

3. IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS THE WORD

This is an important area, but well out of my domain of expertise. I have heard that many religious documents claim "THE WORD" (of God) as primary. From our contemporary paradigms giving primary reality to the physical, we may be biased in our analysis of these claims. What is the relative role of language in the scheme of realities among different human cultures? Are those with a western scientific bias in a position to investigate this?

GENESIS IN THE CONTEXT OF FEEDPAST BOOTSTRAPPING.

Prepare yourself for a wild trip of fantasy. Take the perspective where cyberspace, the domain of textual structures, is THE primary reality. And in the beginning of "it all" (not the origins of the physical universe) there emerged TEXT. And, in this textual domain were woven the basics of the physical, biological and human environments. The big bang and almost infinite expanding universe of galaxies and stars and planets was created in cyberspace -- accounting for the Anthropic Principles [2]. We are, at this moment, via feedpast bootstrapping (information fed back into the past [23]), altering the foundations of physics (e.g., creating the domain of elementary particles) to support new potentials desired within cyberspace. What new cyberspace potentials lie dormant in our human mind/brains? How do we account for what we have already accomplished in terms of spinoffs from Darwinian selected survival systems of our hunting & gathering prehistory? Or, are we, via feedpast bootstrapping altering our very biological and physical structures so as to give us physical and biological foundations for new emergents in cyberspace? In this context, consider the issue of other life in the universe.


 

4. STRUCTURING PROCESS / PROCESSING STRUCTURE

Structure and Process are an essential complementarity: neither is primitive of the other, and each is circularly defined in terms of the other. Structures are that which doesn't change during the process of observation. Processes "work with" structures, and imply change. These are not precise definitions, only something to get us started. Consider some examples.
The text you are reading is a structure, your reading it (and my writing it) are processes. Although the text doesn't change while you read it, reading takes time; your eyes move over the page. I generalize this to "processing structure". I carefully observe you reading, capturing your eye movements on video tape; and, I have recorded, on tape, my fingers moving on the keyboard as I composed these words. The video tapes are structures, they don't change when processed through the VCR. My viewing the tapes is a process. I make measurements (a process) on the tape and plot your eye movements and my finger movements on graphs - which are structures, descriptions of our processes, reading and typing. I generalize this to "structuring process", where structures are created to represent processes. Our "reading" of the graphs (structures) are processes (which can, in turn, be recorded - represented as structures).
In the mythology of physical or objective realism, the universe is proposed as existing as a sequence of momentary states - each state being a structure. A description of process specifies a sequence of momentary states, where some features don't change (permitting the identification of each momentary state {snapshot} being a state of the same {identical} system) and where other features do change (in some patterned way - even if random) through the sequence. If we measure, record, and plot the changes, we create a structural representation of the pattern of changes.
In the mythology of realism, this pattern of change in sequential momentary states is sometimes, also, called a "physical process"; where the "cognitive processes" of observation, recording, and measurement have been extracted, the residue claimed as primary objective reality, and that which was extracted as secondary reality, related to observation, experience, and mind. This mythology can be a useful tool at times, and a dangerous assumption, at others. I claim, that any reduction in thought (a process) of experience will reveal this essential complementarity:

PROCESSING STRUCTURES / STRUCTURING PROCESSES

Note that the "experience of structure" is a weak illusion; it always takes time and change to experience structure. Likewise, whenever we conceptualize process, we are experiencing a structure, a "pattern of change". In the preceding, we have introduced "time", in terms of the distinction between "change" and "no change". Physical time coordinates are ascribed to momentary states when a "clock face" is part of the pattern that is that momentary structure. "Clocks" are but identifiable parts of the experience of momentary states that are ascribed to external systems that produce ordered, numerated, events of defined "equal intervals". "Physical time" is defined by the set of such clocks that "keep phase" during observation.

Why is this important? It helps us break down the contemporary primacy of physical reality over cognitive reality, the primacy of structure over process. Things have to stay put to be measured, thus enforcing the metaphor of static primary over dynamic, at least from the scientific perspective. It also assists us in a redefinition of science as concerned with patterns in data - these are the essential structures for empirical science, not the processes observed, measured and recorded as data.

What are the "components of reality"; structures, processes, or a mixture/merger/integration of both: internal & external, subjective & objective, epistemological & ontological, mental & physical, ideas & atoms, dynamics & statics? Where do we start? Where do we go? We react to our environments, which we perceive as structures. Living is a process that occurs within structures. Living is a process that modifies and creates structures, modifies and creates environments.

I propose a model of three types of environments: physical (natural and made by humans), psycho-social, and textual. From our contemporary scientific perspective, all three realities can be reduced to the physical. People are biological, material. Text, also, always has a physical substrate. It can also be hypothesized that different brain processes have evolved for perceiving these different environments.
 


 

5. THE SCIENCE OF DATA/TEXT

It has long been claimed that the empirical foundation for Science was observation and measurement of the external world. Radical constructivists point out that we have no ways of directly accessing external worlds. [19] Humberto Maturana has detailed a logic for science that remains rigorous yet doesn't assume direct access to external worlds. [10]
Over decades past, I have slowly come to view the empirical foundation for Science, not as observations of the external world, but as observations and measurements of data (as physical objects). When introduced to quantum physics in my PhD program in physics, my initial remark was "this looks like an elaborate curve fitting device". I believe this even more strongly today.
Experiments can be replicated, not repeated. The analysis of data can be repeated, if we assume an invariance of information (pattern) in data to physical decay. Intentional modification of data remains a serious issue - and more so now that much of the data is available in easily modifiable (without detection) digital form. [1]
In the "data" for Science we must include specifications for the setup, data collection, and data analysis. In the past, this was included in scientific reports, but has now been coded and the original "data" is most often NOT public record.
The role of computer automated data collection and integrated analysis is an important issue to investigate. I leave this as a query to be pursued. In context with the thesis of this document, scientific data is "text", and thus the fundamental reality of text and data. With data analysis repeatable, "valid" data will always be historically relevant; new theories cannot simply reject old, valid, data. "Facts", interpretations of data, can change as the contexts for interpretation change.

 

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS OF TEXTUAL REALITY

We appear paralyzed in face of the "World Problemateque" or the "Crisis of Crises". How can we create a sustainable human system, let alone work for the Multi-Millennial Survival/Thrival of GAIA/Humanity in a chaotic and turbulent universe. The past ten thousand years have, indeed, been a "Garden of Eden" of minimal Gaian turbulence. We must prepare for severe climatic variations (Ice Ages and Global Warmings), tectonic shifts, and collisions from asteroids and comets; let alone what we will bring about by our careless manipulations of the biosphere.
We debate weakly about needing radical change in our human and physical environments, while we continue to act and react producing such changes irresponsibly, now that we should know better. Changes in physical and human environments, even for "the good", are risky, costly, and usually irreversible. All creation of structure increases disorder somewhere else. Where can we "put" the disorder that will arise from our creating better sustainable organizations for multi-millennial survival/thrival? How many times can we, without foresight, blindly change things in hope that they will be better? Even if we ALL woke one morning with a deep commitment to love and caring for each other and Gaia, I am not sure we would survive.
Today, good intentions are not sufficient. Chaos and complexity call for counter-intuitive measures and coordinated collaboration. It is my position that we only think we are in an impossible situation, and that if we learn to think in new ways, we will be able to create the worlds we need. The perspective presented here, that text can be viewed as a fundamental reality, may provide just what we need. Please consider it.

 

1. NU AMPHIBIANS COLONIZING CYBERSPACE

What is unique in our human worlds is our textual environments and our languaging competencies. Although both have deep roots in our mammalian heritage, they are unique -- as permanent "dry" land above high tide created environments distinct from frequently submerged islands. The substance of this new land is text, itself comprised of material things and the product of human (read personal and cultural) creativity. But we also remain mammals with pre-verbal signaling systems, coupled through our senses - thus, we are as amphibians building and colonizing a new continent called "cyberspace". And, we must remain amphibians; we will not be able to leave behind our mammalian heritage or our perceptual-motor systems, we cannot move totally into cyberspace. At the same time, our evolutionary heritage includes limitations as well as new potentials, both which must be faced honestly.

 

Everyone wakes to dance in three environments, and while we dance we may change these environments.
Also, as we dance within these three overlapping environments, we may change them; we can move things around, create and destroy things, we and others may learn from our interactions, and our S-R response potentials changed because of it, and we can compose and transform text.
Each new day we waken to environments modified during the previous day.
Although we could converge on rather accurate explanations of micro-movements (given the time and tools) we would still find it very difficult to explain the larger, more extended movement sequences. We could understand how a person walks from the room, out the door and into a car; but we may not be able to explain "why". Why didn't he turn around, sit down, and read a book?
I claim that if we knew the texts that had been comprehended by a person during his or her life, from these records we could explain a fair amount of their behavior. That records show Joan is registered for the 10:10am psychology class in RV120 on Tuesdays and Thursdays would explain much of her behavior Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Most significant human behavior is anticipatory, and not in direct response to immediate stimuli or environments.
We act in our worlds, which we weave with languaging from our interpretations of our experiences, in the context of these developing and evolving worlds. The more difficult to explain and longer term behavior patterns would be associated with specific texts that we had encountered - such as our votes on election day being highly determined by our prior pattern of reading about issues and persons in the election. Market research for merchandise and candidates today exploits these lawful relations.
How free are we in our dances? Accidental encounters of all kinds play a very large role, and make precise prediction impossible. We are far from predicting what poem you will write or what painting you will compose. But even here, in our creating behaviors, there are parameters that could be discovered. I believe that individually and collectively we have the potential for creating our own dance, but it will not be automatic or easy.

 

Consider now the gross patterns of this dance in the more developed, econo-centric societies; specifically the dance within the textual environment. Our first impressions may be that text doesn't play a major role in our dance. Except for a few people who directly work with text, our encounters with text are infrequent and seemingly inconsequential. We are makers and movers of things, and players in the games of human social interaction; encounters with text seem peripheral and incidental. Some people appear to encounter conventional text only accidentally.
But, let us look deeper. Teams of construction workers have worked for months creating a new building. Mostly you would see physical changes. But you might catch a glimpse of people looking at pieces of paper, or talking to others on a phone. You might notice workers looking at marks on some of their tools. Back at the contractor's office you may find a computer with the details of hourly activity recorded within their project management software. Indeed, almost everything made in industrialized societies today is designed and planned; that is, recorded as text and then the text is used to guide the movements in both the physical and human environments.
How much of what items are on the shelves of stores, and how is that information related to data? How are buying patterns influenced by ads and how are the ads influenced by consumer research? If you explored the textual archives of our economic system we would unearth, archaeologically [7] in considerable detail, patterns that would scare us. Alvin Toffler describes in Power Shift [17] how the bar code on merchandise shifted power from the manufacturer and distributor to the retailer. The entire financial superstructure of economies, global to local, occurs in textual fields; and those who know how to manipulate this text are the most powerful.
Those working in judicial systems continually consult texts, from constitutions to case records. Records of meetings and decisions reveal patterns of behavior - often to the considerable embarrassment of those concerned. Shoshana Zuboff in The Age of the Smart Machine [25] describes in detail how institutions are transformed as access to the text (data) of the institution changes. We watch in wonderment at the antics of those who are "writing laws", with the tons of data collected by committee staff, the various versions of drafts, and the confusing process by which a final draft is selected. Some laws are enforced, others are not; and the difference is probably decipherable from other records.
If you had to chose between two alternative sources of information about a city that you needed to make important decisions about, would you chose fine-grained, detailed photographs of every square foot of the city (including all inner walls), or would you chose full access to all data and text stored about the city? Pictures or words? If you knew how to interpret it, most relevant information contained in the pictures would be also found in the data and text, but not the reverse. Of course, we might extend the pictures to include copies of all documents, and the pictures are also text.
I could go on and on, and I suggest that you explore this perspective on your own. What I propose is that our textual environment is actually the most influential of all our environments, and that those who have the most power over the changes in our physical and human environments, are those who have the most power over changes in our textual environments (and access to them). An obvious corollary to this, is that if we want to influence human societal directions, we must concentrate on text composition and modification.

 

I challenge systems theorists to determine those conditions whereby large, complex, rapidly changing and highly dysfunctional living systems (nested hierarchies of systems, in the sense of James Miller's Living Systems [13]) can reform (either by internal or external intervention) significantly (by gradual incrementalism).
I hypothesize that for many such systems today, reform is quite impossible; that so many ad hoc homeostatic forces are at play to maintain a semblance of stability that any push for significant change in one part will bring the whole to its defense and counter all reform attempts. I believe that this is especially true of educational systems, economic systems, and political systems throughout the world.
What I am claiming, in context of the dance in three environments metaphor, is that all contemporary efforts to redirect trends will be damped out. Chaos is at play, and small fluctuations can be amplified by the system - but most likely the outcome will be even greater dysfunction. I claim that all actions today for Gaian/Human survival/thrival is grossly insufficient to our need; and I see no sufficient actions being taken to alter this situation.

 

Given what we know of human nature and human potential, can we imagine a dance that would be sustaining within Gaia (ecolite) and augment the "Best of Humanity"? I believe that we can; but what blocks us is the apparent impossibility of transforming our present dance (sliding towards oblivion) into a nu dance (soaring beyond utopia).
I too, firmly believe, that such a transformation is totally impossible. BUT, I also believe that there are many ways we can catalyze and nurture the creative emergence of one of the new dances, doing the alternative dance in the discretionary times we have in our dance of civilization, gaining momentum until the new dance replaces the old - without ever attempting to transform it. I can't go into details of this model here, but what I am proposing is that our alternative futures be first created in cyberspace, as textual structures we compose, edit, modify, anneal until we have a growing, developing and evolving textual environment that is positive in augmenting changes in our physical and human environments.

 

For two decades, I have been developing and modifying a model for such a global change, which - at this time - I label with the acronym EASEMEN: Expedition for Augmenting the Synergistic Eco-holarchical Metamorphic Emergence of Noosphere. [22] Needless to say, such a model can't even be sketched in an article, let alone a book; it requires, minimally, a quality educational program. What I want to do here is sketch how the new dance might emerge in EASEMEN.
An expedition/community organizes (I will refrain from discussion of initial stages) whose primary objective is the creation of textual structures (I call them participatory cywebs) that augment the creativity, interactivity and productivity of both individuals and the community as a whole. The growth and development of this "cell" is autopoietic, it has no immediate objective to transform anything outside of itself.
In direct analogies with what we are learning about intra- and inter- cellular (biological & molecular) process, as well as embryonic development, we nurture the growth/development of an emergent multi-cellular entity composed of reproducing versions (with specialization) of the initial "cell" (expedition/community).
The lifestyles of members is so positive, and relatively insulating from the general decay around them, that people move rapidly to associate full time with the new movement. The perspective is to continue to learn to do better what we are doing, and continually be open to learn new ways, and even new objectives and goals.
As I shall discuss shortly, all the tools we need to make this happen either exist today, or we could make them tomorrow. I don't underestimate the power of the decaying system and what it might do as it collapses - but I believe there are many ways the new organization can interact with the old so as not to confront it (indeed, make the new invaluable to the old, but in no way dependent upon it).
Eventually, it will be impossible to keep people from wanting to join the new system, and the metamorphosis will be complete. Please, don't try to think too deeply on this sketch - because as a sketch it won't stand up - but the fuller model will. I have given this only to present, at least in metaphor, how by concentrating on augmenting textual structures we can catalyze and nurture the emergence of EASEMEN.

 

Cyberspace is more than representations of physical and human environments, it has a fundamental reality all its own. And, that reality is emergent. Not only do we express ourselves in text, and communicate using text, we invent new styles of text and new languaging processes. This is an emergent "bootstrapping" process - with no end in sight.
Within cyberspace, we discover/create new levels of physical and human environments. The full history of the evolution of languaging and cyberspace has yet to be written. The relative import of ideographic and phonetic visual languages remains an issue. The transformations wrought by writing, speaking to text, reading silently, printing and mass distribution of text has yet to be fully comprehended. With the advent of intelligent tools (computers) and electronic facilitated processing and presentation, a massive new domain of cyberspace is opening up.
In our metaphor, mountain chains are rising for the first time from the elevated continental shelf, and the landscape will forever be different.
Contemporary excitement about Virtual Realities is only a beginning. Mathematician and science fiction writer, Vernor Vinge, postulates a coming singularity. [18] Once we have catalyzed a bootstrapping process whereby we create higher forms of intelligent (either artificial {without humans} or augmented {with humans as components}) systems we will change so rapidly and radically that we cannot even begin to speculate what will emerge.
In one sense I believe that we have already passed that singularity with the emergence of languaging and cyberspace. On the other hand, much of what has emerged to this point has been by accident; once we begin to apply competent intention to our future evolution, Vinge's singularity will soon manifest. Thus, what we might speculate about nu languages will only be elements of the transition. I do not fear this; but have some concerns as to the direction it could take. Many contemporary speculations of the future of cyberspace are quite negative.

 

Once we recognize the importance of text as a relevant environment, we discover that contemporary textual structures are not very functional, and the design of more functional textual structures is called for. Four primary contemporary textual structures are
Note that for the last three, the eye scans freely over the structure, in time, only in the first is the motion of reading dictated by the textual structure. Textual structures should reflect the nested hierarchical and networked organization of ideas. A few examples of new design factors follows.
The smallest autonomous unit should be a structure that can be processed within a short period of time, so that the meaning can be experienced in the specious present. A single graph or diagram is the exemplar. The eye scans the structure until their is some closure in meaning. Further scans of the same structure could yield more meaning.
The meanings intended for conceptual (as distinct from descriptive) paragraphs (linear arrangement of words and sentences) could be conveyed in 2-dimensional arrangements of characters or icons (maybe with 3D simulation, with full use of visual stimuli such as color, font, texture, micro-movement), which the eye scans like a graph or diagram. This can be best facilitated by monitor presentation using computers. Single ideas can be presented on one screen, where the complexity of textual structure on the screen could increase during processing.
Autonomous units of text should be network-linked (hypertext). Hypertext links should be able to be made from points within the autonomous unit (like a glossary link for any character set or icon).
Books are often too small, and libraries are too big. Conceptual organizations of different extent need to have their textual representations designed to facilitate navigation with comprehension, and this must take into account individual differences in text processing and cognitive styles of the reader.
A reader may have the "objective" text transformed to a personally tailored format for reading. Passive reading is often inadequate for complex ideas. It is important that there be comprehension checks built into the textual structure (optional for the reader, but where readers have learned to value such checks), that cycles the reader to assistance if comprehension is insufficient to continue.
We need to distinguish between text composed by an individual or team, and text that is collectively composed and continually annealed. A trail of edits is necessary, and a decision system will be needed to direct the annealing. Formats and protocols are needed to facilitate the recording and editing of textual interactivity (e.g., beyond email).

 

Before I briefly outline some of the new conceptual tools we can use for creating and colonizing cyberspace, for making EASEMEN manifest, I want to mention a few important limitations on human cognition. I believe that we have vast untapped potentials, and I believe that we have many limitations (as a species at this time in our evolution) that we must realistically take into account, and compensate for in our designs. These cognitive limitations have implications beyond the theme of this paper: creating and working with textual structures. But, as will be evident (I will not explicate) these limitations are all very relevant to our understanding of cyberspace as a fundamental reality.

 

Humans are vastly more similar to each other than we want to believe, and we are - at the same time - vastly more different from each other. We have yet to come to full terms with our vast similarities and individual differences. In analogy, consider both the vast similarities (chromosomal and organelle activity) and individual differences (neurons, blood, bone) of cells in our bodies. The success of our biological complexity requires both similarity and difference. So, we must be positive about our similarities as a species and also about our vast individual differences.
I propose the following. Suppose we devise a means of measuring the diversity of human cognitive competencies in relation to our dance in cyberspace and how that dance effects our dance in our physical and human environments. Now, we make comparative measures of the diversity of mammalian structures and processes in relating species to niches. I hypothesize that the diversity measures will be roughly equivalent. That the present diversity of human cognitive abilities with cyberspace is as great as the diversity among mammals for mechanisms for survival. In a sense, with respect to cognition in cyberspace, the human species is rapidly speciating.
Let us consider a few categories of individual differences that should be given immediate attention.
c1a] Cognitive Styles. Experimental psychology has identified a goodly number of cognitive styles: distinctive behaviors of naive subjects to various complex tasks. Most of these styles are set early in life. I would like to add an additional category, I call "mental styles" that relate to reported differences in our experiential realities, in particular, how we report differences in mental imagery. Others have posited connative styles.
c1b] Embedded Figures. I believe one of the most significant cognitive styles is field dependency/independency. I have used Witkin's Group Embedded Figures test on thousands of my introductory psychology students. The results, and their implications, are striking. In the test, subjects are instructed to find a defined simple form (made of straight lines) that is embedded in a complex form (more straight lines) and trace out the simple form. The test was designed by Witkin to spread out the normal population on a flat distribution of scores from 0 to 18. Subjects scoring high are called field independent, they are able to find and trace most simple forms in the complex forms. Subjects scoring low are called field dependent, the complex form holds their attention and prohibits them from disembedding and tracing the simple form. For those who are field independent, the task may be challenging, but doable. It is very frustrating for those who are field dependent, to discover that they cannot see simple forms that are "there", and that others can see.
Witkin and others have proposed a general field dependency/independency style, that should cross many different types of fields. I have found this not to be the case. People high in field independency on the Witkin test (forms with straight lines) can be highly field dependent for face recognition, for music and speech, for other sensory fields. What this means, is that each of us has perceptual fields that we can analyze in detail (to analyze we must be able to hold attention to a part of a whole), and there are fields where we are oblivious to detail (like being out of focus but not knowing it).
Field dependency/independency applies to processes beyond perception, to the conceptualization of complex ideas and models, and to complex operations and processes that occur over time. Each of our worlds are as detailed or as fuzzy as our individual differences in field dependency/independency.
c1c] Mental Imagery. The study of mental imagery has a checkered history in experimental psychology. It was a primary theme of psychology at the turn of the century (the "image" was to be the "atom of the mind"). Imagery became tyrannically suppressed by radical behaviorism for the middle of this century; only with the past decade or two to re-emerge as a legitimate area of study. There are vast individual differences in the population with respect to mental imagery. Some people report powerful, vivid, creative imagery in different sensory modes: visual, auditory, kinesthetics, smell and taste, touch. Others report weak to no imagery. A reported 3% of a population report no visual imagery. 7% report no auditory imagery [11]. These measures need to be improved.
The author of this paper reports no imagery in any sensory mode, which has given him a unique position for the study of individual differences in imagery. Imagery can serve as both asset and handicap, depending on the task. Some tasks people with imagery believe they must use their imagery to perform can be performed (but differently) by those reporting no imagery. On the other hand, there are tasks only those with imagery can perform. For example, those without imagery have no concrete remembrances of past events. On the other hand, those without imagery can be creative, have "imagination", and think, but their thoughts can be neither words or visual images - the best I can call them are "concrete experiences of conceptual-emotive abstractions". Since our experiential realities are a foundation for our worldmaking, and we use both our perceptual imagery and our thinking that isn't driven by perception, our vast individual differences in our experiential realities is very significant as we attempt to model a common world.

 

George Miller proposed the 7+/-2 law that limits our experiential world to 5 to 9 independent variables at any moment [12]. Chunking and recognition of relationships permit our experiential world to be very complex, but at its base, there are no more than 7+/-2 degrees of freedom at any moment. A corollary could be proposed that the same limit would apply to the number of degrees of freedom (requisite variety) of a system that a person could manage.
If a system changed slowly, so that it would be ok to assume that most variables are not changing at any moment, we could learn to manage (over time) systems with more than 9 independent variables. I propose that until recently, those systems humans attempted to design and control fit this requirement. However, more recently, as the pace of change has accelerated, many real systems have more than 9 independent variables interactive at any moment. Some of this accelerated complexity results from our use of computers (that don't have this limit), and we have to work to use computers to help us design and manage such systems.
The critical interactive systems on our planet today vastly exceed this limit, which implies that no single human will ever be able to fully comprehend the whole sufficiently in realtime to be able to manage it. Only computer augmented teams can do the job.

 

In spite of the 7+/-2 limitation, very complex and rapid processes can occur in our experiential reality, and even more rapid and complex processes are implied in the subconscious. We can think far more rapidly and with far greater complexity than we can express. The characteristic times of "pure" thought are much shorter than the characteristic times of behavior. There are times when "paragraphs" of thought accompany short phrases that I am lucky to write before more thoughts invade my experiential field. There are ways and times when we can couple our mind/ideas to our body/behaviors. But we must recognize this serious limitation between thinking and expressing.

 

I absorbed the concept of "lockin" from an old mentor John R. Platt, long before I recognized its significance. I now realize that every moment of my life I am locked into a very small part of my whole, and am aware of that lockin only for brief moments when I observe myself shifting from one lockin to another lockin. When in any lockin, the experiential world has an aura of holism - there is a feeling of closure and consistency.
During those brief moments when I shift between lockins I am aware of the distortion of the prior lockin, when major variables have been neglected, only to easily slip into a new lockin, using new variables but gaining new distortions. This issue of lockins becomes very important as the complexity of the systems we consider increase. We cannot avoid lockins.

 

Today, the fad emphasis in virtual reality for visualization (and other sensory-like experiences) demonstrates the tyranny of the sensory immediate as exemplar for mind and experiential reality. For the few of us handicapped by a lack of mental imagery, we are able to directly experience the "ground of meaning" that serves as context to mental images in most people, and to all people when perceiving.
Careful analysis will reveal that the information experienced at any moment is far beyond and different from the information impinging on the sensorium at that moment. Perception (and its related process of thinking) is more akin to a continual world-weaving process modulated by sensory information than our images being the end product of processed sensory information.
A demand for visualizable models for reality is severely limiting - even though visualization does play a major role in conceptualization. It is very useful to represent our models of reality in 2 or 3 dimensional representations, even extended by the use of color and micromovements. But reality has dimensions far beyond three, so our models of reality must be beyond visual representation. This can be extended to a generalized imagery that is multi-media (multiple sensory modes). There is no Archimedian point from which, in a short period of time, we can experience "the whole". Indeed, "wholes" are quite different from parts, and can't ever be directly experienced.

 

The metaphor of "the big picture" is very misleading. It puts us in a frame of mind to expect a visualization of the whole. Given the above limitations of the experiential world, there can be no "big pictures", and to demand them, or to wait for them before acting, may be dangerous. I speak not only of experiencing the big picture of the universe, but also of myself. I have never experienced myself, whole, in experiential reality.

 

It is a fact that ideas can be shared, that even quite complex ideas can spread in a population or culture. We are often in error if we attribute that sharing to the process of communication - as defined in terms of encoding, messages, channels, and decoding. This limited model of communication ignores "that which is prior to encoding" and "that which is the product of decoding".
Herbert Brun makes a useful distinction between "communication" and "anti- communication":
These limitations are very relevant to our processing and relating to text. They necessarily lead to individual differences in interpretation of "objective" text. This requires that textual structures designed for augmenting human interactivity and organization be individualized -- that is, having different textual versions of the "same message" for different styles of text processing.


 

2. NEW CONCEPTUAL TOOLS FOR COLONIZING CYBERSPACE

To some, Doug Englebart is the "father" of modern computing. [14] He invented word processing, the mouse, the window, and online hypertext interaction as tools for his concept of computers "augmenting" human intelligence, creativity, interactivity, and productivity. AI as "Augmenting Intelligence" is a far more powerful concept than "Artificial Intelligence", that unfortunately has become the exemplar for man-computer interaction.
Computer systems (intelligent mechanistic systems) become powerful augmenting interfaces between humans and between humans and organizations of humans. Our future evolution will include a co-evolution of ourselves in organizations facilitated by augmenting tools, techniques, and technologies.
Cyberspace is an emergent cyborg, consisting of human eco-holarchies and intelligent mechanistic systems. New tools are usually invented to enable one to do something that can be already done, but faster or better; they are amplifiers of human action.
The products of amplified human activity are often of a quality and functionality not found in products made without amplification. Amplified technology catalyzes some people to envision new and different applications of the tools. Tools used in this way I call augmenting tools. We have only begun to envision the augmenting of human activity by computer and telecommunications technology.

 

Bootstrapping consists of creating temporary foundations on which to build new structures, and to transform other structures. Later, that which was a foundation will be modified, while that which was recently being created becomes the new temporary foundation. We must also regress back the effect on what we did prior, by our now altering our previous foundations. This is not a linear process.
One of the major themes in Doug Englebart's vision of augmenting is the bootstrapping process. One example of bootstrapping is our discourse on the three primary realities: material, mental, and textual. When we are discoursing on one of them, we are making temporary assumptions about the other two. Bootstrapping is also involved when we create textual structures that will later guide our actions in creating new physical structures and human organizations - which, in turn, augment our further creation of augmenting textual structures.

 

Mechanical systems can support organistic emergence. Exemplars for such supportive systems are scaffolding, looms, wombs, and agricultural superstructures. By engineering design processes, we can create mechanical structures that support organic emergence. We don't drive the cellular and developmental processes of plants and animals, but we create environments that optimally nurture those processes. In this sense, our textual structures are scaffolding. We navigate within them as we organize ourselves to create new physical structures and new organizations. At the same time, through our emergent organization, and using the physical structures of our tools, we create new textual scaffolding; thus furthering the bootstrapping.

 

Synchronous (real-time) and asynchronous (delayed-time) are two distinctive modes of interactivity.
In RT (real-time) our cognitive systems interact at a subconscious level; we materially couple to our common structural interface. Face-to-face conversations (with non-verbal signaling), telephone conversations (with intonations and pauses), and computer chat (with affective symbols) are all examples of RT interactivity.
Letters and memos, writing and reading books, composing and viewing videos, email and computer conferencing are examples of DT (delayed-time) interactivity.
RT and DT interactivity have co-evolved. With the advent of computer and telecommunications technologies the interaction has increased. We need to study and design tools and techniques to optimize the synergy between RT and DT interactivity.

 

I define "composing" as the creating of textual structures, designed to augment human personal, interpersonal, and group behavior. When human personal, interpersonal, and group behavior is guided (in part) by textural structures, this process will be called "performing".
RT/DT activity can be organized in cycles of composing/performing. Some compositions can be very prescriptive and precise as scripts to guide behavior; but can still leave time and opportunity for spontaneous creating. Scripts can exist for creating other scripts. Scripts can include places where performers propose modifications of scripts or suggest new scripts.
Descriptions of performances (including recordings) are textual structures that can be compared (according to other scripts) with the initial script (prescriptive textual structure) to evaluate the whole process. Composing/performing cycles can be greatly augmenting of human creativity and productivity, and not necessarily restrictive as might be the first impression. If we are to create large and complex social structures for human multi-millennial survival and thrival, such augmenting systems will probably be necessary.

 

One might imagine an accessible archive of PPPs (Prescriptive Project Proposals) with different degrees of specificity and precision. When people need to perform a task, they seek out the appropriate PPP, have it tailored to their specific situation, and use it as a guide. Feedback from their actual performance can lead to new versions of the PPP. As they perform, they may compose new PPPs, or suggest (abstracts) of new PPPs needed, that other groups might compose. We might analogize this evolving archive of PPPs as a DNA system for social construction. PPPs are textual genes. The actual performance of human teams to the PPPs are analogs to 3 dimensional folded proteins in process.

 

I don't like the term "virtual" because it implies non real, whereas the communities of persons interacting via RT/DT systems can be very real. Cyberspace is real. [15]   As a nu humanity emerges within cyberspace there will be many variations of human organization (communities).

 

Linearity (including causal chains and linear logic) represents only one pattern of reality. Shifting the linear to practical tool and away from fundamental truth is liberating. Cyberspace as it emerges within contemporary hypertext systems has enormous potential to change our views of reality, writing, reading, and thinking [3].
Unfortunately, the term "interactive" as applied to most contemporary hypertext is limiting. The extent of "interaction" is the user being able to chose between branching points - the user can tailor his or her experiences of the hypertext and in that limited sense of navigational freedom "participate" in the "creation of the text".
But, in most contemporary hypertext systems, the users can't significantly modify the hypertext. To characterize a hypertext system that augments the modification of textural structure (as well as facilitate navigation of existing structure) I propose the term "participatory hypertext". The simple MSDOS programs by Neil Larson [8] augment the composing and annealing of participatory hypertext.

 

I am not making a scientific proposal here, as to the truth of the fundamental reality of text. That is, I can't propose a small set of critical experiments to test this assertion. Which is not to say that it doesn't have empirical implications.
Eric Drexler makes a useful distinction between engineering and science; the latter attempts to explain (in larger contexts) whereas the former (engineering) attempts to create or make [5]. Engineering and science are interactive sibling disciplines; engineering is not applied science.
For Drexler, ordinary engineering attempts to apply existing tools to the creation of new forms. Exploratory engineering proposes the use of tools not yet invented (but scientifically and technologically feasible) for the creation of new forms. What I propose here is that we create new tools for creating augmenting textual structures (such as RT/DT systems, composing/performing cycles, participatory hypertext, groupware) that will permit us to create a new form of human organization on this planet. The "proof will be in the doing". If we wait for full scientific proof, the opportunity side of crisis will be lost and we will be left with only the danger.

 

It may be useful to re-configure "democracy" within cyberspace as the participatory collaborative process of text creation. Legislators in congresses propose and vote on textual structures called bills or laws. Other texts guide the implementation, or non-implementation of the new bills. Administrative systems attempt to have behavior conform to the bills or laws, to the text. Courts interpret the text. Citizens are informed of this activity via text and are asked to vote on their representatives using text. Electronic democracy has improperly been construed as electronic voting, just as democracy is confused with electoral processes. However, with the manipulation of text by the elite controlled media, electoral systems are now no guarantee of democracy (citizen participation in all relevant decisions).
If electronic democracy were to include full citizen participation in the creation and interpretation of those textual structures that guide governance, we may approach a truer version of democracy. Thus, I propose that the creating of systems that facilitate participatory and collaborative textual construction and interpretation is vitally needed.

 

Communication and cooperation are highlighted as important aspects of human interactivity. But I claim that they, alone, are insufficient for the design and management of complex systems. There is an essential precision-of-fit for complex systems that requires collaboration and coordination. These latter imply constraints and limits to individual freedom that seem implied by free communication and free cooperation. Groupware that efficiently facilitates coordination has been called fascistic.

 

All structures are two faced, double edged; they can both constrain and facilitate. Institutional re-organization is an attempt to modify organizational structure so as to augment certain processes. What is usually ignored is that any structure also constrains and limits other processes. No single structure can be sufficient. Structures are as tools, they may need to complement each other.


 

FINAL REMARKS

There remain many implications and consequences of this proposal to consider text as fundamental reality, as well as a multitude of details to explore. The paradox between security and openness will always be important. The architecture of the textual system and protocols for access and modification have many potential variations. Whatever we initially design will be significantly modified once it becomes used. What experiments need be designed and performed to evaluate the tools before they are applied globally?
THE GAIAN ATTRACTOR
In metaphor, I view the emergent textual system as a "Gaian Attractor". It will serve as scaffolding for emergent human cognitions and behaviors, with optimum chaos. This attractor may be viewed as containing "operational genes", guides for action. The attractor will itself evolve, through the creative actions of people using it.

REFERENCES

[1] Anderson, C. (1994) "Easy-to-Alter Digital Images Raise Fears of Tampering", Science, 263, pp 317-318.
[2] Barrow, John & Tipler, Frank (1988) The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, Oxford University Press.
[3] Bolter, Jay David (1991) Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext and the History of Writing, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
[4] Brun, Herbert (1986) my words and where i want them, Princelet editions, p.48.
[5] Drexler, Eric (1988) "Exploring Future Technologies", in The Reality Club (Brockman, John, ed.) New York, Lynx Books, p.131-150.
[6] Foucault, Michel (1970) The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences, Random House, (original in French, 1966).
[7] Foucault, Michel (1971) The Archaeology of Knowledge, Pantheon Books (in French, 1969).
[8] Larson, Neil (1993) MaxThink Software, 2425 B Channing #592, Berkeley, CA 94704.
[9] Maturana, Humberto.& Varela, Francisco. (1988) The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, Shambhala.
[10] Maturana, Humberto (1992) "Reality: The Search for Objectivity, or the Quest for a Compelling Argument", a paper presented at a Conference of The American Society for Cybernetics, Oct28-Nov1, 1992 at Seabeck, Washington.
[11] McKellar, Peter (1972) "Imagery from the standpoint of introspection", in The Function and Nature of Imagery, (Sheehan, Peter, ed.) Academic Press, p.37.
[12] Miller, G.A. (1956) "The Magic Number Seven Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Processing of Information", Psychological Review, 63, p.81-97.
[13] Miller, James (1978) Living Systems, New York, McGraw Hill.
[14] Rheingold, Howard (1985) Tools for Thought, New York: Simon & Schuster.
[15] Rheingold, Howard (1993) The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, Addison-Wesley.
[16] Sacks, Oliver (1990) Seeing Voices, Harper-Collins.
[17] Toffler, Alvin (1990) Power Shift, Bantam Books.
[18] Vinge, Vernor (1993) "Technological Singularity", Whole Earth Review, 81, pp 88- 95.
[19] von Glasersfeld, Ernst (1987) The Construction of Knowledge, Intersystems Publications.
[20] Victor, Laurence J. (1978) Categories of Mental Experiences: "Cognitive Emotive Imagery", paper presented at 2nd American Conference on the Fantasy & Imagery Processes, Chicago, Nov 1978.
[21] Victor, Laurence J. (1986) "Living Ideas & Some Propositions", Continuing the Conversation, Fall 1986 #6, pp 4.
[22] Victor, Laurence J. (1988) "Expedition SEMEN" Continuing the Conversation, Summer 1988, #3, pp 6-7.
[23] Victor, Laurence J. (1994) "Practical Speculations at the Edge of Science", a paper presented at the June 14-19 summer conference of the International Society for the System Sciences, Asilomar, CA.
[24] Winograd, Terry & Flores, Fernando (1986) Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design, Addison-Wesley.
[25] Zuboff, Shoshana (1988) The Age of the Smart Machine, Basic Books.