Patrick John Coppock
The Norwegian University of Science and Technology
College of Arts and Science
Department of Applied Linguistics
N-7055 Dragvoll
Norway
e-mail:
The
rapid growth and dissemination of distributed virtual environments made
possible by new digital communication technologies like those offered by the
Internet, and more recently, Intranets, opens up an interesting new field for
semiotic investigations of the growth of community and the evolution of
communication and dialogue in all fields of the sciences. As these technologies
are taken in use by scholars to communicate and co-operate, the technological
mediation of communication affects the flow of signs which characterise and
constitute the socio-cultural semiotic of science in complex and as yet poorly
understood ways. Practices of writing in distributed virtual environments
differ for example in several ways from the practices of writing in more
conventional environments. The range of semiotic systems activated in such writing
is greater than in conventional writing, requiring the development of new
cultural and social conventions for doing so, and for reading such texts.
Writing in distributed virtual environments is often of a more oral, dialogical
form than in conventional environments, etc.. This paper will examine some of
these differences, seen in relationship to the difference between the basic
notions of "interactivity", "interaction" and
"dialogue", and their respective roles in the evolution and
constitution of textual norm systems for scientific communication when writers
collaborate in making meaning in, and of, such environments.
In the
course of the last five years or so there has been an explosive growth in the
number and range of technologies being made available for workers in almost all
fields of scientific investigation to facilitate international communication
and cooperation in science. What were once quite restricted sets of resources
and potentials made available only for a handful of scientists and researchers
at the most well-equipped universities and research centres in the
technologically advanced world, is now blossoming into a world wide web of
internationally linked digital networks, often referred to as the Internet,
that provides advanced communication and cooperation tools for an increasingly
wide range scientists at a rapidly growing number of physical locations all
over the world. Although the distribution and dissemination of such
communication technologies and the software tools necessary to utilise these
resources is still not universal at the present time, more and more scientists
and researchers are beginning to investigate the use of what I will from now on
refer to as "distributed virtual environments" as a scientific
"writing space" (Bostad 1994). (I shall
come back to what I mean by "writing" in more detail later on.) This
is changing how science is being "done" on a day-to-day basis in ways
that we as yet have little or no understanding of as yet. This is especially
true because the new ways of working fostered by the growth and spread of these
new communication technologies are still at a quite embryonic stage of
development. Many experiments have been initiated for using different variants
of these technologies to communicate and cooperate in various scientific
environments, but it is still not at all clear what the effect of this on-going
transition from face-to-face, physically "close" cooperation to
working at a distance in distributed virtual environments actually means for
those who take part, and for the growth and development of scientific knowledge
in general. In more general terms we still understand rather poorly how the
experience of using these technologies is contributing to changing, i.e.
affecting the evolution and development of, the various textual and
interactional norm systems associated with the day-to-day practices of
"doing" science. We also know little about in what ways the
collective and individual work practices being developed around the use of
these evolving technologies in the various social and (inter)disciplinary
environments in which they are now beginning to be used is contributing to
changing the technologies themselves, and of course, in the process, the
textual and interactional norm systems of those scientific workers who
contribute to developing and constructing these technologies.
First,
I would like to provide some more context, in the form of some rather tentative
definitions, in order to frame my further discussion of these issues. When I
speak of norm systems I am referring to culturally coded systems of ways of
producing and interpreting texts and discourses created through what Berge
(1993(a)) has described as process of normative change through 1) explicit
normative prescription 2)
norm socialisation and
3) norm constitution.
Here I will not be able to go into these three theoretical concepts in any
depth, so interested readers are referred to the aforementioned article for
more a more detailed discussion of these[1],
but I want to point out that in this particular context I am mainly concerned with
the last-mentioned kind of normative change, namely norm constitution, since distributed virtual environments
are such a relatively new phenomenon that although both prescriptive normative
change and norm socialisation do seem to be operative at least to some degree,
they do not appear to represent the most dominant form of norm system change at
the present time. Berge's definition of norm constitution is as follows:
"Norm
constitution is paradigmatic normative change. This is a type of change made
into a social institution by romantic versions of modernistic art, whereby the
unique `I' seeks completely original texts. Often uniqueness is searched for in
opposition to established norms, and innovation is often linked to influential
individuals. It is often interpreted as a revolutionary activity. [...] such
norm constitution is possible when embedded in a systematically organised and
disciplined frame, where creativity is a social goal superior to the search for
the authentic individual text and where [novice] authors are in fact granted
some authority." (ibid. pp. 225-226)
Berge
also makes a distinction between production norms and receptive norms, and between directive norms and qualificational norms (see Berge 1996, pp. 31-32). In this
particular context the focus is mainly on production norms and qualificational
norms, although the other two kinds will obviously be involved in any process
of normative change. This particular focus is because I am interested in
investigating how new systems of textual and interactional norms arise and
develop over time in distributed virtual environments, and in the relationship
between the more basic process of normative development and change, and the
material and socio-cultural conditions which lie behind and drive such
processes.
Now,
what do I actually mean when I refer to "distributed virtual
environments" as I did a moment ago?
The
best way to exemplify what I mean by a distributed environment (let us leave
out the idea of "virtual" for the time being as I will come back to
that later on) is to refer to the World Wide Web, the international hypertext
or hypermedia system made possible by the Internet that is developing at an
extremely fast rate daily at the present time. Any "page" or
"document" that is "published" (i.e. made accessible by
some person or some institution) through the distributed medium of the World
Wide Web may have text, images, graphics, animation sequences, video sequences
and sound sequences embedded in it, and may be "read" from anywhere
in the world by anyone else who has the requisite technology (normally a
personal computer with the necessary software and hardware installed to allow
Internet accessibility) to "visit" and download the page. A World
Wide Web page "published" via the Internet may also have so-called
"interactive links" from a highlighted word or phrase, or even an
icon or image on the page to another page stored digitally on a server anywhere
in the world embedded into it. When such a link is activated by a
"reader" (generally by "clicking" on the link using the
technological mediation of the arrow cursor guided by a computer
"mouse") from his or her computer screen, the corresponding page is
downloaded by the system and appears on the screen, superseding and/ or
supplementing the page where the link in question was originally activated. In
semiotic terms , these interactive links may be considered as tokens of a more
general sign type: a "dynamic index", which often will have some iconic
or symbolic properties.
In one
sense then, each page (with its associated set of iconic, indexical and
symbolic content matter and inherent dynamicity), is simultaneously
"globally distributed", since it is in principle accessible,
activatable and downloadable at locations radically distant from where it is
located "physically", for anyone who wishes to do so, and who has the
necessary means to do so, anywhere in the world[2].
Now, to refer to a World Wide Web page of this kind as an
"environment" may seem anomalous for some, and I will need to qualify
this further, but for the moment let us content ourselves with referring to
such a page as a distributed, "object-oriented" environment, since it
is oriented to containing and making accessible for those who choose to
"visit" the environment using a networked computer system, tokens of
a number of different types of semiotic "objects" (text fragments,
images, graphics, sounds, links etc.), generally organised in some kind of systematic
way in order to make them "readable" by the visitor. Seen from this
point of view, then, the semiotic environment of the World Wide Web is
therefore a highly complex one which involves the more or less sophisticated
use of a wide range of sign types and semiotic systems in order to represent
and communicate a wide range of meanings.
I
shall go on to discuss other forms of environments, and the more general
concept of environment a bit later on, but first I would like to move on and
mention yet another level of "distribution" in World Wide Web pages.
A sign such as an image or icon "written into" or
"embedded" in such a page does not necessarily have to reside
"physically" on the same computer system as the one where the page it
is embedded in is stored. The image may reside materially (i.e. as a collection
of bits and bytes on a hard disk) on some computer system or other at the other
side of the world, and only become actualised (i.e. actually phenomenologically
presented to the reader) as a semiotic element of the page being accessed at
the time of its being opened by any given reader. This means that sign objects
of this kind may be shared, or simultaneously distributed, in the sense that it is not necessary to
make multiple copies of one and the same image and store them in, or even at
the physical location of, the page in which they will be used, or to which they
are linked, but to access the embedded or linked object at its geographically
distant physical location through "calls" from the other pages at
other geographically distant physical locations that incorporate them. The same
kind of simultaneous distribution potential applies of course to other kinds of
digitally encoded semiotic objects, such as sound, video and animation
sequences, graphics, diagrams etc., and to other kinds of reader-activatable
resources or functions: for instance small applications often referred to as
"applets", which may be activated via the network to "come and
visit" from where they are located physically in order to perform certain
limited sets of tasks at distant locations by those who might need to use them
there.
This
means that we need a very broad definition of writing if it is to be applied to
these kinds of environments. There are several aspects to this. Firstly,
"writing" will obviously not only be done through the use of the more
or less conventionalised semiotic system of text alone. The planning and development
of a hypermedia Web page may include systematic (or otherwise) selections with
regard to a number of other semiotic systems or codes, involving the combined
use of static icons, indexes and symbols (icons, complex images, diagrams,
graphs etc.), and dynamic icons, indexes and symbols (animations, video
sequences and sound sequences etc.). Selections with regard to which of these
semiotic elements are to be linked to other documents or environments, and why,
must also be made, as must the embedding of semiotic objects from other
geographically distant sites. Finally, selection of various types of processes
or functions, such as various types of "interactivity" or
"dialogue" like the above-mentioned interactive links from elements
to other documents or environments, various kinds of interactive schemes or
forms that can be filled out and the contents sent to their writer/ author/
co-constructors or authoring institution, embedded e-mail addresses that allow
person to person communication with other authors or institutions, various
kinds of information search and retrieval functions, and finally calls to the
distributed applets that I mentioned earlier that might for example allow for
many to many communications, such as is the case on the page shown in Figure 1, which represents my "virtual office"
at Diversity University MOO, where a small window at the bottom of the screen
allows on-line written discussions with other people who happen to be
"present" in that particular virtual environment at the same time as
I am.
Notice
that I have above expanded the term "writer/ author" by means of the
further qualifications of "co-constructor", and even "authoring
institution", since the complexity of the choices involved in such forms
of writing means that it is becoming increasingly difficult for single
individuals to be able to master (well at least) all of the necessary
"writing" skills to take part in such writing activities.
If we
move on to an even higher level of complexity of interactivity or dialogue with
the virtual environment, namely to the level where one is for example writing
new applets to perform increasingly complex functions of the types briefly
referred to above, then one cannot manage to interact with, and develop the
medium one is writing for unless one possesses the necessary programming skills
in for instance C++, or some other "low level" programming language.
This again means that many different kinds of "writers" with many
different kinds of backgrounds might need to be involved in the on-going
development of distributed virtual environments of this kind as
co-constructors, consultants and specialist experts.
The
term "virtual" and the associated concept of "virtuality"
are semiotically complex, and have several possible sets of denotations and
connotations. The first of these is the one we might associate with the kind of
use of the term that we find in the following sentence: "she was virtually
ignorant of the way in which other people perceived her, and didn't really care
either", where the connotation of the word "virtual" is one of
"almost completely", or "more or less", or even
"quite". The term "a virtual novice", connotes someone who
has just begun to learn how to do something, but has not come so far on the way
to becoming what we might call an "expert" yet. Note that in this
particular context even experienced scientific writers in the more conventional
sense of the word (I.e. someone who has written and published a great deal of
his or her work previously) may find themselves in the role of novice in
relation to at least certain aspects of the writing process in distributed
virtual environments[3]. There is thus also a
strong semantic element of "being" or "becoming" tied to
the use of the term in this particular kind of context. On the other hand, the
expression "the virtual president", applied to an advisor or
consultant who never appears in public discussion and debate forums as the
president does, but who in practice has more power than he or she does to
influence state policy through his or her relationship to the president (who is
in this case really only a kind of figurehead for the state), is another
connotation again, implying some non-directly perceivable system of
manipulation and control (not necessarily malignant) from behind the scenes -
i.e. something which seemingly is not the
case, but in fact is.
If we
now move on into the realm of physics, the term virtual has yet other
connotations and uses. The term "virtual image" is, for example, the
image that we would perceive if a screen is placed within the cone of rays that
emanate from a film or slide projector. If the screen is not there we cannot of
course perceive the image even if we stand in front of the projector and let
the rays shine into our eyes. Used in this way, the connotation of "almost
completely", or more or less" is non-applicable, and has to be
adjusted to one of "there, but not directly perceivable", or perhaps
more precisely, "present as a potential". The modern-day term
"virtual reality", which I am not overly fond of, since there is no
way that I can see in which reality (and now I am referring to reality in
Peircean terms as "the real": that which is, that which exists,
independent of what you or I might opine about it) can be either "almost
completely there", "something which seems not to be, but which in
fact is" (cf. the virtual president" ), or something which is, but
which can only be perceived if it is made to project onto something else (the
physics example). This term seems however, if we examine it closely, to embody
at least some aspect of the potentiality (i.e. potentially perceivable, or
experiencable) of the last-mentioned example from the realm of physical science.
As I understand it then, the term "virtual reality" ought to be used
to refer to constructed, digitally mediated, contrafactual (or hypothetical)
environments or objects, or to "more or less" kinds of simulations of
factual environments or objects, but not to a contrafactual or hypothetical reality, or to a "more or less"
reality, which of course would ontological absurdities, given the Peircean
definition of reality I used above.
Some
of the problem with assessing the meaning of the term, "virtual
reality", arises, I believe, from a confusion (whether this confusion is
an ideological or intentional construction or not is immaterial here) among the
proponents of the widespread use of it, between two basic orders of reality, which Michael Halliday (1987)
has referred to as "the natural order" and "the social
order". The natural order being "reality", in the above Peircean
sense of "that which is, independent of what you or I might mean about
it", and the social order which is, couched in rather simplistic terms,
that which we as human beings both instantiate and construe as our physical,
mental, social and cultural reality. Speaking in evolutionary terms, the
natural order is obviously prior to the social order, since man evolved (as far
as we are able to understand this process) relatively late in the evolutionary
process which (presumably) began with the "beginning" of the physical
universe as we know it. Speaking in ontological terms too, the natural order is
also obviously prior to the social order, since before the existence of human
beings there was (presumably) no ontology, since there were no minds to develop
one.
So
having said this, let us go back again to the concept of distributed virtual environments
and re-examine this concept in the light of these two orders of reality. First,
however, I would like to go on just a bit more and make a further extension of
my discussion of the concept of "environment". I said earlier on that
it may seem anomalous to refer to multi- or hypermedia pages published on the
World Wide Web as "environments", but qualified this by saying that
we might at least for the moment consider them as object-oriented environments,
since they offer visitors an opportunity to interact with tokens of various
types of digitally coded and generated semiotic objects. But an environment (we
might even use the ecological term "eco-niche" here) in the human
sense of the word is of course much more than mere objects that we interact with.
It is correct to say, simplistically at least, that our relationship with the
natural order, i.e. the natural environment in which we live, is necessarily
one of relating to, and interacting with in various ways, natural kinds of
objects: things like stones, minerals, earth, plants, geographical and
topological entities, meteorological "products" such as rain, hail
and snow, and last but not least the multifarious range of artefacts of our own
human technologies such as tools, books, newspapers, architectural structures,
cars, televisions, telephones, bank ATM's, computers, robots and the like. But
at the same time, we know intuitively through our experience of the world that
many of these objects are not objects in the sense of being "dead" or
inanimate things, but are in fact constantly changing as a result of on-going
evolutionary, natural and socio-cultural pressures. The vast majority of these
"objects" (if not all) must then be understood at a rather more
fundamental level as dynamic semiotic processes or systems (or as constituents of such processes and systems)
in themselves, rather than as inanimate objects alone. As we all know, ancient
ruins left behind by other earlier civilisations than ours are constantly
subject what we often figuratively and collectively refer to as "the tooth
of time": erosion, pollution, souvenir hunters, grave robbers, tourists'
flashbulbs and their collective bodily humidity etc., and if they are to remain
and endure in order for future generations to see them, need considerable care
and attention, and even systematic strategies for their continued preservation
and maintenance to be made and implemented in order to do so. Science, and now
I am thinking mainly (but not exclusively of course) of what we know as the
natural and physical sciences, is at its most fundamental level, concerned with
studying, describing and analysing natural semiotic processes and their
products/ artefacts and thus contributing to a further development of their
meaning for us as human beings, much in the same way as
"pre-scientific" (cf. Luckmann 1989, p. 2) human beings were
concerned with making meaning from, or of, their immediate environment in order
to survive. It is this kind of meaning making activity, which Michael Halliday,
with reference to Rulon Wells' (see Makkai & Melby 1985) characterisation
of language as "the distinctively human semiotic", has described in
the following way:
"All
this dialogic construction is, by definition, interactive. At the micro level,
we get to know our fellow creatures by talking to them and listening to them;
and they respond to us in the same natural language. At the macro-level, the
"dialogue with nature", brilliantly scripted by Prigogine and
Stengers (1985) in their book Order Out of Chaos, is also interactive; but in
another guise. When we want to exchange meanings with biological or physical
nature we have to process information that is coded in very different ways, and
that may need to go through two or three stages of translation before we can
comprehend it." (Halliday 1987, p. 106)
Now,
notice that Halliday makes a distinction here between two forms of
interactivity; or rather, two levels of interaction and dialogue. At the
micro-level of the individual dialogue with, and within the framework of, the
social order, the social, cultural and interpersonal dialogues and interactions
that we have with our fellow human beings, which allow us to come to know one
another, and which are carried on largely through use of natural languages, and
at the macro-level, our dialogues or interactions with material nature, which
are only made possible by various forms or processes of translation, such as
those actualised at the material level by various kinds of interpretational or
representational technologies or tools, or at the linguistic, or
lexicogrammatical level by the development of the highly specialised
metalanguages of mathematics and science.
However,
as Halliday (1994, 1995) goes on to point out, the formalised metalanguages
developed in the natural sciences tend to try and reify processes, through
grammatical processes of grammatical metaphor and nominalisation, and, since
they are designed systems rather than evolved systems, they are not really very
good at coping with what they have been developed to do, namely conducting our
dialogue with nature. As he puts it:
"...these
scientific metalanguages are among the more designed varieties of human
language - hence, like all designed systems, they tend to be rigid and
determinate. These are the very features that make metalanguages unsuitable for
just that purpose for which they were in fact designed: the dialogue with
nature, for which it is essential to be able to mean in terms that are dynamic,
non-compartmental and fluid - and above all, that do not foreclose.
The
irony is, that is exactly what natural language is like: dynamic,
non-compartmental and fluid. But it has got smothered under the weight of the
metalanguages that were built on it." (Halliday 1994, p. 112)
Moving
on to what Halliday refers to as the social order, it is clear that this kind
of order is the one that is most clearly instantiated and construed (though of
course not exclusively) through the medium of natural (rather than designed
forms of) language:
"The
social context of language behaviour - the situation in which meanings are
exchanged - is also a semiotic construct; and it is perceived as such by those
taking part. The interactants in a speech situation treat that situation as
embodying aspects of the social order - as having a certain potential in terms
of which their own acts of meaning will be interpreted and valued. They have to
do this in order to be able to make predictions about the meanings which are
likely to be exchanged. [...] The social context of any conversation is
constantly being created, by the course of the conversation itself as well as
other processes that may be taking place; and those involved unconsciously
assess its ongoing semiotic potential, using this information not only to
interpret the meanings of others, but also to project the likely scope and
interpretation of their own subsequent acts of meaning." Halliday 1984, p.
8)
Notice
that Halliday referes here to "acts of meaning" and "language
behaviour", thus extending the scope of his perspective to (potentially at
least) include aspects of the social order that are not mediated by the
language code alone (see amongst others O'Toole 1994 for an illustration of how
a systemic functional approach may be applied to art and architecture). Since
systemic functional linguistics is oriented towards the study of how meaning is
socio-culturally instantiated and construed through the use of language as a
system, rather than focusing merely on form and structure issues, as is
normally the case in logico-philosophical approaches to language (see Halliday
1984, pp. 3-7 for a more detailed discussion of this) , the study of language
behaviour and its inherent and concomitant acts of meaning cannot be done by
removing it from its environment of actualisation and use - i.e. the social order,
with language being seen as a cultural and social semiotic, organised
internally on a functional basis. Language is within such an ontological
framework not interpreted as sets of rules, but as a resource. As Halliday puts
it: "The code is the system. a potential; `behaviour is the actualisation
of that potential in real life situations; in other words, `code' equals
`potential for behaviour' (ibid., p. 5)
This
definition of code used here by Halliday is at a rather higher level of
generality rather close to systems of what Luckmann (1989) has referred to as
"communicative codes", and in their more socio-culturally ordered
forms, "communicative genres". In a systemic functional framework
human interactions through language (exchanges of, and within, the social
semiotic, if you like) combine with human interactions with the physical matter
of the material world (exchanges of, and within, the material semiotic) to
develop our complex socio-culturally instantiated and construed meanings about
both the natural (or material) order and the social order (Halliday's macro-
and microlevel interactions).
Elsewhere
(Coppock 1994, 1995(a),
1995(b)) I have argued that the various kinds of
distributed virtual environments made possible by the new communication
technologies discussed above must be considered as dynamic open systems, in
much the same way that recent systemic functional approaches to the study of
languages and cultures consider these to be dynamic open, or `eco-', systems
(see Halliday 1987, 1994, 1995; Lemke 1993). Since people (and of course the natural
resources and processes of the fragile physical world we live in) are involved
in every possible stage of the conception, development and use of new
communication technologies, and since the evolution and development of these
technologies is determined (at least to some extent) by the evolution of the
material and socio-cultural environment in which they are designed to function,
we cannot it seems, escape from using evolutionary and biological metaphors in
our descriptions and interpretations here. As Halliday (1994) has pointed out:
"Biological
processes are harder to model than physical ones, because they are more
complex: they are physical (hence governed by the laws of physics), but they
have other properties besides - they are dynamic open systems, having life, and
therefore history, and the tendency towards increasingly complex patterns of
exchange with their environment. Semiotic processes are of still higher orders
of complexity. Even when we have an idea of how life evolved from matter, there
is still a mystery about how meaning evolved from life: how semiotic processes
grow (via the social) out of biological ones." (Halliday 1994, p. 34)
Here
we might add "and via the cultural", as the social and the cultural
are of course so closely intertwined as to be almost indistinguishable from one
another. These social and cultural orders are framed by the natural order which
sets many of the basic parameters for what is, or is not possible to realise of
the inherent potential of these orders. At the same time, it is quite clear
that the complex meanings developed among the (inter)actors or interlocutors
who are taking part in processes of instantiating and construing the social and
cultural order can develop lives of their own, and these meanings can go on to
interact dialogically with the natural (or material) order and develop new
understandings of this order, and even in certain cases affect how we as human
beings interact with it in quite radical ways, as the technology developed for
"splitting" the atom in the 1930's and 40's which itself resulted
from the application of the new understandings in physics generated by
Einstein's discovery of the theory of relativity, illustrates quite well.
While
interactions with the technology at the material level affect those who
interact with it, and change the ways in which they experience using the
technology (at a physiological, or even pathological level, the well-documented
"hacker" / typist problem carpal tunnel syndrome is one rather
dramatic example of this), it is important however to remember that these
material interactions not only affect the users, but also the technology
itself. When I look closely at my office computer and see the worn patch on the
top of the mouse button where I place my finger, and the pattern of wear on the
computer keyboard (some of the embossed characters on the mostly used keys are
becoming worn so thin that it is getting difficult to see them), I realise that
my habitual ways of using it are also constantly forming the very "matter"
of the technology as I work with it.
These
more banal kinds of material interactions are of course also tied intimately to
processes of development and change in our everyday practices and ways of
thinking too. In systemic terms, the material and social orders of our reality
interact, constantly producing new instantiations and construals of ourselves
and our social and cultural practices, and the relationships between these
practices and the natural order.
At a
different, some might say more "virtual" (here, I mean of course
simulated or programmatic) level of interaction, the computer software that we
use to do things we need to do may be considered another kind of
"matter", and is increasingly becoming something that is becoming involved
in interactive or dialogical processes of meaning-making, which means that our
human patterns of use, and our very pragmatic day to day needs can affect the
evolution and development of the technology as a working environment in various
ways. I am thinking here of software like my word-processing program which has
already become fairly "user-configurable", and which in principle is
designed to allow me to select to some degree which I will make the most
"salient" or "accessible" functions and to put others I do
not consider to be so "out of view". What I find I actually tend to
do, however, is to merely avoid using those functions which I do not experience
as useful within the range of things I use it for. This leads of course to
quite a bit of unnecessary "noise" in my working environment - noise
that is in Shannon and Weaver's information theoretical terms - which I just
have to live with. The point being here that out of the whole range of
available functions that have over time come to be built into the software by
its creators, I find I only perceive as useful (and hence use) a quite
restricted set of these to do what I need to do. I have however never been
prepared to take active steps to remediate this, since the developers of the
software have been basically out of reach for any form of dialogue on this
matter. Distributed virtual environments open up for other kinds of
interactions and dialogues in this respect. I am thinking here of various
e-mail "conversations" I have had over the years with the people who
are continually developing Internet browsers like Netscape, putting forward,
and even discussing, various aspects of the basic design of the software which
I have been pleased or dissatisfied with, at the same time as I have been using
it. Now, whether or not these interactions actually do have any effect in the
longer term, the very fact that it is now possible to communicate directly by
e-mail or on-line written conversations with the people "behind" the
technology while I am actually "in" the environment that they have
created represents a quite different level of interaction with the technology
than merely being registered as a "user" of the technology and using
a phone-in assistance service to solve some practical problems I may have in
using a word-processing program. These new levels of interaction and dialogue
are gradually changing my subjective perceptions of the tools that I use.
Rather than only being a "user", in the sense of a rather passive
consumer of some product or other and trying to adapt my ways of working and
thinking to the technology, I find myself becoming, to some degree at least, a
potential "participant" in a wider developmental process, with the
possibility of making my opinions known, and maybe even influencing the further
development of the selfsame technology.
It
seems than to me then, that it is necessary for any socio-culturally grounded
(c.f. the "social order" referred to above) semiotic approach to the
study of developing and changing norm systems in science as increasing numbers
of scholars and researchers begin to use new communication technologies, to
focus not only on how the use of these new technologies changes our day to day
ways of thinking and working, but also how these changing ways of thinking and working
are simultaneously contributing to the further evolution and development of
these distributed virtual environments. The potential for more dialogical forms
of interaction and dialogue with, and within, distributed virtual environments
is something that is clearly already present, and this communicative and
cooperative potential is growing all the time. There is obviously still a lot
of work that needs to be done in order to better understand the complex
relationships between the growth of interpretative and cooperative communities
in distributed virtual environments and the continuous intersubjective and
dialogical constitution of new systems of norms that will make it possible to
exploit and evaluate the creative and communicative potentials inherent in this
technology. We also need to study how our human interactions and dialogues
with, and within, the material and social orders as they are actualised to
varying degrees in distributed virtual environments are contributing to the
instantiation and construal of changing systems of norms for scientific
communication and cooperation in general, and how these processes of norm
system constitution and change are affecting the further evolution and
development of the technology we are now using to an increasing degree to
"do" the everyday work of science.
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