Introduction

The quantum information theory began to rise in the end of 20th century. The EPR (relation)really is quantum entanglement, Consequently, it makes the concept of information in science expand from classical information theory to quantum information theory, and a new concept of quantum information formed. The primary concept of information faced to new challenges and produced some important philosophical questions. For example, can we set up the concept of quantum information? What is the nature of quantum information? The past common concept of information (the information is the elimination of uncertainty) could be used in quantum information? Whether does the emergence of quantum computation mean to eliminate no-boundaries between the quantum and the classical? My aim in this paper is to discuss these questions. My philosophical analysis focuses, however, on the basic quantum information theory.

Methods

The research method is analytical philosophy and logic that make quantum conception more clear and accurate.

Results and Discussion

The concept of information could be set up. fundamentally speaking, it did be supported by the Shannon information theory and further philosophical reflections.

According of information theory, (classical) information concept could be set up, and there are two necessary preconditions: (a) the premise is a set of possible events, and they can be described by the probability. (b) the information is the elimination of uncertainty.

Fundamentally, quantum information is also satisfied with the family-resemblance two preconditions:

(1) Quantum information describes the possibility of microscopic things, and quantum information is the expression of wave function. The wave function describes the state of microscopic particles, and presentation of the possibility of microscopic objects.

(2) On the aspect of eliminating the uncertainty, the quantum communication is same as classical communication. The signal receiver once received quantum signals transmitted, and the receiver eliminates the corresponding uncertainty of quantum. Therefore, the quantum information is the elimination of quantum uncertainty, and which is called quantum information I.

From two point of views, the possible events and eliminate uncertainty, the quantum information and classical information have family resemblance. Quantum information like Classical information way of transmission, it is delivered by the information source, and is received by recipient through the information channel.

Quantum Information is similar to classical information, but more essential difference between them, specifically in the following three aspects: (1) The probability directly describe the possibility of classic events, while wave function (or probability amplitude) describes quantum events in the quantum world, and the absolute square of wave function is corresponded to classical probability. (2)There have the essential difference between qubits (quantum qits) and classical bits. (3) Classical information can be completely cloned or deleted. nevertheless, quantum information is neither cloned (no-cloning), nor removed completely.

To my point of view, through the analysis of the process of quantum teleportation, a quantum uncertainty can be divided into three categories: the first is the external uncertainties of microscopic particles; the second the uncertainty of the superposition state; the third the inherent uncertainty of microscopic particles. These three uncertainties can be eliminated by three different ways that are transmission of quantum information, accurate quantum transformations and the creations of quantum entanglement. Therefore we can give the general definition of certainty: a situation (the state of events, things) is of certainty, if they are satisfied with the following conditions: (a) a situation is entirely determined by n events parameters; (b) n parameters of events has an accurate values simultaneously.

The existences of quantum states form quantum facts. Quantum states show themselves, and therefore it releases the information to the outside world. For this reason, there have two aspects of quantum state which need to express: existence of quantum state is the quantum fact, here we emphasize "existence"; and quantum state can show to the external world, which is the quantum information, here we emphasize "Show". Hence, quantum information is the show(Zeigt) of quantum state, which is called quantum information II.

The nature of quantum information is the show of quantum events and their correlated ways. Quantum information is a kind of certainty and order. Quantum information can be divided into quantum informationⅠand quantum informationⅡ.. Quantum InformationⅠjust only a phenomenonal definition, it does not go deeply into the nature of the information. Therefore, the elimination of uncertainty can not be seen as the nature of quantum information itself .

In the process of quantum teleportation, the source of quantum information (such as quantum state , a and b are coefficients) is delivered to the receiver, what is the essence of quantum information? From the point of view of quantum information theory, quantum state represents quantum information, quantum state is the state of quantum system (or microscopic particles) or quantum events. in the quantum state , what quantum states disclose the quantum information does not be the absolute size of quantum information, but the relationship, since the coefficients a and b satisfy the condition , and it do not be important numerical a and b, but between their relative size and relationship, which reflects the correlated ways between a and b.

The connotation of quantum InformationⅠand quantum information Ⅱ offers support for the common view of classical information concept. Which is more deeply to disclose the nature of quantum information for both of them? Obviously, quantum information Ⅱ reflects the nature of quantum information.

Quantum reality and quantum information are unified. What the wave function expresses is quantum reality. The wave function is unified of quantum information and quantum reality. There is no quantum reality, there is no quantum information. Because of the information and reality are unified, and quantum information different from classical information, so we can deduce that quantum reality is different from classical reality, and quantum computing differs from classical computing. In the classical parallel computing, the value calculated in different circuits respectively, but in parallel quantum computing the value calculated in one circuit, which is the essential difference between classical and quantum parallel computing.

Many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics does not mean that the difference between quantum and classical disappears: (1) Superposition in the microscopic world is very different from classical macroscopic physical world, so it is impossible that the superposition principle is fit for quantum world used for the classical world; (2) "To perform a quantum measurement, quantum world can be split up numerous classical world" is not supported by any experience and evidence; (3) Each branches of quantum computing are in quantum states, and quantum states are coherent, holistic, and some even entangled. Nevertheless, it is impossible for classical computing to achieve the quantum computing’s specific features; (4) The essential differences between quantum and the classical are decided by the development history of quantum mechanics and quantum information theory. The differences between quantum and the classical is really established by the quantum theory, concepts and their experiments that include Heisenberg’s matrix mechanics of Schrodinger’s wave equation, uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics and quantum entanglement phenomena and so on. They are completely different from the classical physical theories, concepts and experiments.

Figure 1. Quantum information processing

(see PDF version for the Figure).                               

Conclusions

This fruitful work gives an discussion of quantum concept that is the quantum information is the elimination of quantum uncertainty, which is called quantum information I and quantum information is the show (Zeigt) of quantum state, which is called quantum information II. Quantum information II reflects the nature of quantum information. The nature of quantum information is the show of quantum events and their correlated ways.

Acknowledgments

This research work of this paper is supported by 2011 the Philosophy and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education of P. R. China (Project Number: 11JZD007) " Studies of the development trend of contemporary technological philosophy" .

References and Notes

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2. Shannon, C. E., The Mathematical Theory of Communication. The Bell System Technical Journal. 1948, Vol.27, pp.379-423, 623-656.
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8. Duwell, A. Quantum information does not exist. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics，2003, (34).
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10. Caves， M. and Fuchs，C. A. 1996. Quantum information：how much information in a state vector?. preprint quant-ph/9601025.
11. Barrow, J., et al, Science and Ultimate Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology and Complexity. Cambridge University Press. 2004.
12. Yongde Zhang, Principles of Quantum Information Physics. Beijing: Science Press. 2006.
13. Wheeler, J. A., At Home in the Universe. New York: Springer-Verlag. 1996.
14. Guolin Wu, Quantum Entanglement And Its Philosophical Meaning, Studies in Dialectics of Nature, 2005, (7).
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The emerging Global Brain is a prime example of a complex, adaptive system for which it is of the highest priority that it be made resilient, i.e. able to withstand a wide variety of shocks or disturbances. Ross Ashby’s Law of Requisite Variety [1] is used as a mental model to operationalize the concept of resilience in coupled complex adaptive systems. One way to deal with complexity and surprise is to increase the diverse range of capabilities that can be called upon when different stressful conditions arise. A resilient system is a system capable of: 1) adaptation, 2) evolution. While adaptation can be achieved by investing in the absorption of shocks through investing in the structural properties of a system, evolution requires flexibility and decentralised architecture [2, 3]. Therefore, a type of robustness that leaves enough space for the introduction of novelty and the selective pressure of evolution needs to be explored in the discourse of resilience. A resilient system has been considered to have specific adaptive capacities that enable it to make decisions about trade-offs that insure its stability whilst leaving sufficient flexibility for transformation [4]. In this paper, I emphasise that the combination of a centralised and decentralised management mechanism can create the right conditions for the emergence of a resilient, adaptable, and evolvable system. The decentralised style of management is called the adaptive governance mechanism [5] and is currently under development as an alternative to the traditional command and control (C2) management of social-ecological systems [6]. However, the lack of a sound theoretical basis that explicitly demonstrates the relationship between decentralisation, top-down control, the required conditions for resilience and emergence of the collective intelligence (i.e., a Local Global Brain) is still evident.

Ashby (1958) in the law of Requisite Variety states: ‘the larger the variety of actions available to a control system, the larger the variety of perturbations it is able to manage or only variety absorbs variety [1]’. Since a system is resilient only if it can absorb changes that are arising from shocks and stressors while dynamically maintaining its key functions and structures [7], and since the impacts of change and stressors unfold in complex and nonlinear ways [8], this paper, through the application of a decentralised ecotourism management system [9], illustrates that in addition to cultivation of diversity as a buffering method as Ashby (1958) demonstrates, fostering a resourceful management/leadership mechanism that is able to harness the utility of diversity also has to be an integral part of a system’s overall resilience and self-sustainability roadmap. The case study used in this paper aims to demonstrate that:

An example of a placed-based adaptation strategy that is focused on harnessing the collective intelligence of the local community can be a potential way to empower communities' capacity for self-organisation, self-sustainability, coordination and learning.

Diversity can be integrated into the governance process as an adjustment parameter that, if it is rightly managed and designed in a system, can be used as a tool to nudge a system’s trajectory of evolution toward a higher degree of wellbeing [10], resilience and self-adjustability [11].

A combination of the general principles discussed earlier and the lessons learned in this local community case may help us to formulate a strategy for attaining a sustainable, resilient, and collectively intelligent system at the global level i.e. a Global Brain [12].

References

1. R. Ashby, "Requisite variety and its implications for the control of complex systems," Cybernetica vol. 1, pp. 83-99, 1958.
2. Heylighen "The Growth of Structural and Functional Complexity during Evolution " in: F. Heylighen, J. Bollen and, A. Riegler,The Evolution of Complexity (Springer) pp. 17-44, 1999.
3. Heylighen, "The Science of Self-Organisation and Adaptivity " in Knowledge Management, Organizational Intelligence and Learning, and Complexity, in: The Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, EOLSS, ed Belgium: Publishers Co. Ltd, 1999, pp. 253--280.
4. M. Anderies, M. A. Janssen, and E. Ostrom, "A framework to analyze the robustness of social-ecological systems from an institutional perspective," Ecology and Society, vol. 9, Jun 2004.
5. Folke, T. Hahn, P. Olsson, and J. Norberg, "Adaptive governance of social-ecological systems," Annual Review of Environment and Resources, vol. 30, pp. 441-473, 2005.
6. S. Holling and G. K. Meffe, "Command and control and the pathology of natural resource management," Conservation biology, vol. 10, pp. 328-337, 1996.
7. Walker, C. S. Holling, S. R. Carpenter, and A. Kinzig, "Resilience, adaptability and transformability in social-ecological systems," Ecology and Society, vol. 9, Dec 2004.
8. S. Holling, "Surprise for science, resilience for ecosystems, and incentives for people," Ecological Applications, vol. 6, pp. 733-735, Aug 1996.
9. Beigi, "Managing Ecotourism and Sustainable Development with Collaborative Networks " Master of Science dissertation, Civil Engineering, University of Bristol 2011.
10. H. Thaler and C. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. Michigan Yale University Press & New Haven and London 2008.
11. Beigi, "Mindfulness Engineering: A unifying theory of resilience for the volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world " Ph.D. dissertation, Civil Engineering, University of Bristol, 2014.
12. Heylighen, "The Global Superorganism: an evolutionary-cybernetic model of the emerging network society," Social Evolution & History, vol. 6, pp. 58-119, 2007.

The educational research community lacks a consistent methodology for the study of learning that does not begin with humans, their goals, and their concerns (Sørensen, 2009). While the modern practice of schooling is and always has been inextricably intertwined with its materials, the formative significance of materiality to the social project of education has received surprisingly little theoretical attention (Adams, 2010; Fenwick & Edwards, 2013; Edwards, 2010; Johri, 2011; Sørensen, 2009; Waltz, 2006). While educational artifacts are noticed, they are largely not considered integral to the educational program. “Artifacts remain interesting set pieces, but not participatory, interested actors” (Waltz, 2006, p.54).

Waltz (2006) speculates that the reason educational theory disregards or underestimates the role of things, is because it treats nonhuman[1] entities as categorically different from human ones. The natural and artifactual world are opposed to and separated from the social world. This clear-cut dichotomy between sociality and materiality, which traces back to Descartes’ notion of the internal and external (Barad, 2007) and which we find validated within the Positivistic tradition of scientific inquiry, have inscribed a division between the object and the subject that continues to define educational thought and research, which is itself deeply rooted in the sociological tradition (Waltz, 2006). According to this perspective, since human-to-human interaction is radically different from interactions between human-material, the participation of nonhumans is not only secondary, but also considered outside the realm of the traditionally sociological.

But even when educational artifacts find their way into educational accounts, they are commonly framed as transparent representatives of human interactions, i.e., as tools that serve human aims (Sørensen, 2009; Waltz, 2006). Contained by human intention, be it educator or learner, tools remain an extension of or reliable iteration of the work that people do. The problem, however, with conceptualizing educational things as tools, is that they deflect analysis because they remain simple, circumscribable objects (Waltz, 2006). As equipment, the nonhuman is analytically subsumed by human intention, design, or drive, always and only referring back to the person, group or institution that puts it to work. In treating nonhuman entities as representatives of human ends, such an analytical framework obscures the unique qualities of the thing itself and the complex ways in which it interacts with humans in the constitution of social events.

Similar to artifacts like books, pencils, chalk and blackboards, new technologies are also being framed by educators and educational researchers as useful, subservient tools. Lave and Wenger were among the first scholars to call out the problematic relationship with technology evident in research on learning: “In general, social scientists who concern themselves with learning treat technology as a given and are not analytic about its interrelations with other aspects of a community of practice” (1991, p.101). Even educational technology literature has failed to overcome the tool metaphor, remaining relatively immune to the work of science and technology studies (STS) and Actor-Network Theory (ANT) scholars who, for example, observed early that technologies are often unfaithful to their creators and thus produce unanticipated effects beyond the (educational) aims intended (Latour, 1993; Bijker et al., 1987; Haraway, 1985). The work of the handful of scholars who have attempted to overcome the tool metaphor by applying ANT to the study of learning technologies will be reviewed below.

Against this background, the present paper aims to develop an analytical framework and a set of tools that can help educational technology researchers, as well as educators interested in online and blended learning, better understand how technologies influence educational practice in general and how they contribute in particular to shaping different forms of knowledge and varieties of presence. By providing a lens through which to understand how humans and “things” (platforms, artifacts, infrastructures) perform educational processes in a structure of relations, this paper intends to contribute to ongoing conversations, debates and arguments around the evaluation and improvement of online learning platforms and applications, as well as the educational uses of technology more broadly.

More specifically the paper examines the potential of the “materiality of learning” (Sørensen, 2009) as a new lens to examine the uptake and design of the virtual learning environment, by pulling together different approaches to materiality that have not been looked at together in the education literature, and that draw attention to the literal, performative, social and distributed aspect of online learning platforms and applications: Drucker’s (2011, 2013) notion of performative materiality, Blanchette’s (2011) notion of distributed materiality and Sørensen’s (2009) notion of relational materiality. The paper demonstrates with specific examples how these approaches help us analyze virtual learning processes as emergent, fluid performative, and yet very much dependent on the material conditions that give them being.

The paper is divided into three sections. The first section surveys existing research in the field of educational technology and problematize its treatment of technology. The purpose of this section is to review the types of questions concerning technology that are currently being asked and answered in the field of education and propose alternative questions that we may ask using a material approach. This section also intends to highlight cases where technology integration failed in an education setting and suggest how materiality might help us a) understand why and b) move forward.

The second section of the paper surveys material approaches to the study of technology and learning and examine how the concept of materiality has been theorized in the context of learning technologies. It acknowledges seminal work in the field - most notably Sørensen’s theory of relational materiality in virtual learning environments - and point out some gaps in the conceptualization of materiality in current educational research. The purpose of this section is to situate and explain the different perspectives, and highlights their limitations.

The third section demonstrates how our current understandings of the “materiality of learning” can be enhanced by Drucker’s (2013) concept of performative materiality and Blanchette’s (2011) concept of distributed materiality, two theories of materiality that have yet to be applied to the educational context. This section uses illustrative examples to demonstrate how the notions of performative and distributed materiality can help us form a more holistic understanding of learning technology and online learning in particular.

The conclsuion of this paper is concerned with how learning sciences, science and technology studies and the digital humanities can mutually inform each other, in particular what education researchers can learn from scholarship in the latter two fields. Applying concepts from humanities and science and technology studies to education, this paper attempts to offer a broadened understanding of how virtual learning platforms and spaces shape different forms of knowledge and varieties of presence, on the one hand, and suggest how educational processes can become engaging, adaptable, and more experimental on the other.

Reconciling the material and social aspects of technological practice can help us move beyond the universalized, decontextualized visions of technology that have dominated research on learning in education, psychology, sociology and cognitive science. A better understanding of how technologies contribute to educational phenomena may help educational technology designers design better platforms and applications, instructional designers design better learning experiences, and policymakers implement more appropriate policies. But all this is dependent upon moving research from a focus on content and representation to a more experimental, fluid and performative engagement with the materializing of educational practice.

References

Adams, C. (Winter 2010). Book Review [Review of the book The materiality of learning: Technology and knowledge in educational practice by E. Sørensen]. The Alberta Journal of Educational Research, 56(4), 482-484.

Bijker, W. E., Hughes, T. P., Pinch, T., & Douglas, D. G. (1987). The social construction of technological systems: New directions in the sociology and history of technology. MIT press.

Blanchette, J. F. (2011). A material history of bits. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(6), 1042-1057.

Drucker, J. (2011). Humanities approaches to interface theory. Culture Machine, 12(0), 1-20.

Drucker, J. (2013). Performative Materiality and Theoretical Approaches to Interface. Digital Humanities Quarterly. 7(1).

Fenwick, T., & Edwards, R. (2013). Performative ontologies: Sociomaterial approaches to researching adult education and lifelong learning. European journal for Research on the Education and Learning of Adults, 4(1), 49-63. 

Haraway, D. J. (1985). A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s (p. 173-204). Center for Social Research and Education.

[1] Use of the terms "human" and "nonhuman" entities (or actors) is typical of studies adopting the Actor-Network (ANT) perspective. ANT assigns agency to both human and non-human actors (e.g. artifacts). I thus employ the term "human" over the more common "thing" or "material object", in order to illustrate my understanding of Skype as a generative and agentive nonhuman that creates and interprets meaning. For more on ANT see Latour’s Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (2005).

Introduction

Education is a driving force for economic and social development of every country. The students’ future depends on the applicability of knowledge and skills built up during the educational process. Significant state resources, not just financial, but from the entire community are invested in the improvement of education, and students preparation for the life challenges. Technological developments have a strong influence on evolving education paradigms toward a teaching enhanced with information and communication technology (ICT). Many factors are influencing successful implementation of software for solving particular problems and inconsistencies in education practice and teaching approach. Within the education system in Serbia, students are required to participate in the national testing at the beginning and at the end of the school year (standardized tests that assess students' knowledge level).

The goal of this paper is to present the education software tools for the evaluation and monitor of students’ knowledge and achievement, at the national level by monitoring and analyzing initial and ending student’s tests results. There will be emphases the model of such software, and highlighted roles of participants in the educational process. In particular the attention is directed towards defining analytical reports presenting statistical information about various factors of students’ progress, classes and schools districts. Such testing would be indicating the good and bad teaching practices which can serve as a model for the new strategy of improving education.

The analysis of the results collected in these tests would be beneficial not only for students and teachers, but for the entire education system. Platform “Initial Testing of Knowledge” is being developing by doctoral student at the Faculty of Mathematics at Belgrade University and Faculty of Sciences at University Novi Sad.

Methods

Due to various factors that affect the performance of this type of testing, it was necessary to find a consensus about the division of corresponding content. The platform “Initial Testing of Knowledge” can be used to test student from fifth to eight grade (from 11 to 14 years old). The content of each grade is divided in 10 parts and two random tasks are taken from each part. Since the platform is interactive, the number of parts and tasks could be adjusted to needs and preferences of the authorities.

The beta version of the software is being tested in minimum four stages.

The first stage was conducted from September to November 2014. In five elementary schools were tested approximately 500 students.

The next stage is scheduled for June 2015. The authors are planning to test minimum 1000 students of same age group as in first stage from minimum 10 elementary schools.

The next two stages are scheduled for the September 2015 and June 2016.

Results and Discussion

The results of the first stage of testing are presented on the official page of the platform.

Conclusions

Using this type of platform allows reduction of costs and time of testing, enhances the safety of the testing process, reduces chances of errors and disables students' cheating. Obtained data can be analyzed by students, teachers and other participants in the education process.

Acknowledgments

Authors are thankful to all the teacher and schools where the preliminary testing of the platform took place, especially to Zorica Zeljković, who works as a math teacher at Vuk Karadžić elementary school in Novi Sad, Zorica Blagojević, who works as a math teacher at Đura Jakšić elementary school in Kać, Radoslav Božić, who works as a math teacher at Jovan Jovanović Zmaj elementary school in Sremska Kamenica and to the Ľudovi Štur elementary school in Kisač.

References and Notes

1. Alexander, R. (2008). Pedagogy, curriculum and culture. In K. Hall, P. Murphy & J. Soler (Eds.), Pedagogy and practice: Culture and identities. London, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd. 
2. Bersola, S. (2002). The influence of high-stakes standardized tests. Stanford University, California. 
3. Black, P. (1999). Assessment, learning theories and testing systems. In P. Murphy (Ed.), Learners, learning & assessment (pp. 118-134). London: Paul Chapman.
4. Gipps, C., Broadfoot, P., Dockrell, B., Harlen, W., & Nuttall, D. (1992). Problems in national assessment: A research critique BERA Dialogues: Policy issues in national assessment.
5. Pejic A., Todorovic O. (2007). Nacionalno testiranje ucenika IV rareda, Ministarstvo prosvete i sporta Republike Srbije Zavod za vrednovanje kvaliteta obrazovanja i vaspitanja.
6. Shepard, L. (2000). The role of assessment in a learning culture. Educational Researcher, 29(7), 4-14. 
7. Wiliam, D. (1996). Standards in examinations: a matter of trust? Curriculum Journal, 7(3), 293 -306. 

Introduction

The integration of Facebook and other web 2.0 platforms as parts of daily routines in Western societies has made ever more pressing the question of how these technologically mediated environments afford and mould people’s activities and interactions. A particularly pertinent issue that has received only scant scholarly attention so far is how users experience, understand and potentially reflect the ‘architecture’ of the digitally enabled social spaces. In other words, do users pay attention, and if so, in what ways, to the spatial characteristics generated by the computer code that afford their communicative actions? A related question concerns the users’ perceptions and views of the interlinked technological and economic dynamics that underlie the production of these spaces and to which the users’ own activities contribute.

In this paper, we propose that Stuart Hall’s classic encoding/decoding model is useful for grasping critically how people (inter)act in and understand the distinctive spatial nature of web 2.0 environments. It is our contention that the model, despite being created for the analysis of mass communication (and using television as its example), continues to offer valuable theoretical and methodological footholds.

In current research on web-based social media, two lines of study in particular are prominent: one of them being concerned with user practices on social media sites, and the other focusing on these sites’ operational logic from a political-economic perspective. In conceptual terms, the difference between these research foci is one between the level of individual agency and that of the systemic structure (see, Berg 2012). Analyses that combine these two foci are rare. Instead, studies that explore user practices tend to ignore the economic structures and other macro-level forces that shape the online spaces’ architectural set-up, thereby affecting and steering user experience in them. When concentrating on the structural and systemic aspects, researchers, in turn, are inclined to dismiss the potentially active role of the users.

Our proposal in the paper is that Hall’s encoding/decoding model provides a fruitful starting point for addressing these two aspects as irrevocably entwined. To demonstrate the model’s critical analytic potential in the contemporary context, we use as an example our empirical study of Finnish users and non-users of Facebook.

Hall’s model meets connective media

Since its introduction by Hall in the early 1970s as a colloquium presentation and a stencilled paper in the CCCS series (Hall 1973), and after being published in an edited and more concise form in 1980, the encoding/decoding model has gained a firm and largely unquestioned position in the field of cultural media studies. True, the crudeness of the model was already being criticised in a constructive manner when first applied in empirical analysis by David Morley (see Morley 1980, 1981; also Morley 2006), and critical views have been presented even later (see, e.g. Pillai 1992; Schrøder 2000; for an outright rejection, see Barker 2003). Nevertheless, the model has not been seriously challenged nor substantially reworked as a conceptual framework. This, in fact, was something Hall himself regretted (see Angus & al. 1994). Indeed, Michael Gurevitch and Paddy Scannell (2003) were able to claim more than ten years ago that Hall’s model exemplifies “canonization achieved”.

The canonization of the encoding/decoding model can be said to concern primarily media audience studies, which has tended to understand the model and utilise it in quite a restricted manner. First, audience studies scholars have focused almost exclusively on the decoding of media representations. Second, they have more or less ignored the relation of production, as well as the technical infrastructure that Hall (1980: 130) also distinguished, to the decoding side of his diagram that describes the whole production–consumption–realisation–reproduction circuit. In the present digitalised and networked condition, the encoding side is extremely important to take into account. Even more pertinent today, given the transformations brought about by technological development and its entanglement with centralised economic forces, are the model’s productional and infrastructural aspects.

In order to tap the methodological potential inherent in Hall’s model, we bring it into dialogue with the critical political economy of web-based media. More particularly, we aim to rework the model for the purposes of empirical research by cross-pollinating it with the notion of connective media, as defined by José van Dijck (see, e.g., van Dijck 2013). By doing this we seize Hall’s insistence that if the encoding/decoding model is “of any purchase now and later”, it “needs to be worked with and developed and changed” (Angus & al. 1994: 255).

We apply van Dijck’s distinction between connectedness and connectivity and support her suggestion that the term ‘social media’ should be replaced with ‘connective media’ in order to capture more adequately the commercially informed logic of automated data collection on web 2.0 platforms. While ‘social media’ resides firmly within the hegemonic discourse of connectedness that the owners of sites such as Facebook themselves foster, ‘connective media’ enables shifting of attention to the economically driven technical aspects of data mining – an aspect that keeps disappearing in research that focuses on activities and interactions afforded by online environments.

Negotiations of Facebook environment

We illustrate the present applicability of the encoding/decoding model with a small-scale empirical study on user and non-user understandings of Facebook’s operational logic and of the site’s spatial characteristics. The data were collected in four focus group discussions (eight users, nine non-users) in spring 2013 in Turku, Finland.

In the qualitative analysis of the data, inspired by Hall’s model, five negotiation positions were constructed in relation to Facebook as connective media: the positions of approval, belittlement, normativity, compliance and disapproval. A general observation in our study is that what users value most is the possibility of staying in contact with people; this is an aspect that several previous studies about Facebook have also shown to be the main reason for using the platform (see, e.g. Ridell 2011; Joinson 2008). The disapproving position was the only one in which focus group participants reflected on Facebook’s architectural affordances. In this position, users paid attention to how the site’s spatial features affect connections with other people.

The positions of belittlement, normativity and compliance demonstrate different levels of approval. In the position of belittlement, people did not find anything alarming in the operational logic of Facebook. In the position of normativity, they considered 'proper use' (exemplified by their own uses) as a way to avoid potential problems with the platform. Finally, in the position of compliance, people noticed that there are certain problems and concerns about the site but tolerated them, as there seem to be no alternatives.

Our analysis suggests that positive user experiences on web 2.0 platforms and the routinisation of their use as an integral part of everyday life diminish the likelihood that users would question the material-economic preconditions of these environments. Relatedly, the operational logic of data mining is considered uncomplicated by users, and there is little capacity and motivation among them to imagine alternatives to the profit-driven model.

In our example, the notion of negotiated code (or negotiated reading) in the encoding/decoding model is especially central. As Hall stresses, we are not talking about “one position at all” but about a ‘space’ which is “filled out by a number of different positions” (Angus & al.: 265). Moreover, even in the case of mass communication, which serves as the primary context for Hall, “negotiated readings are probably what most of us do most of the time” (ibid.). In our study, we approached all decodings as negotiations. These variations range from total rejection (such as refusing to watch The Social Network film and to visit websites of companies that use Facebook pages to advertise themselves) to feelings of discomfort due to Facebook having become increasingly commercial (experiences of an intimate space having disappeared and being replaced by a space where one is continuously bombarded with advertising).

Rethinking determination in the digitalised condition

Based on our discussion, we raise key issues for further reflection in critical cultural studies. These include the need to rethink the very notions of encoding and decoding, as well as reassess their (inter)relations. With regard to encoding, we should keep in mind Hall’s remark that it is “a much more contested and variable space than comes through in this model” (Angus & al. 1994: 263). As for decoding, one can ask how we should reassess Hall’s observation that decoding as an activity takes place in a position that is always structured in dominance (see ibid.: 261, 263). This is a problematic that cultural audience studies transformed into a question of ‘active audience,’ thereby simplifying at the outset the encoding/decoding model, reducing its scope and losing its critical edge.

Today, due to the connective affordances of digital networked technologies, the whole question of determination that we find at the core of Hall’s model has become ever more complex and fluid. A major issue in this regard, and one that particularly calls for rethinking, is that negotiation(s) in contemporary media environments do not concern merely, or even primarily, symbolic meanings produced and available in them, but rather their architectural and invisibly material dimensions as spaces of (inter)action.

References

Angus, I. & al. Reflections upon the encoding/decoding model: An interview with Stuart Hall. In Viewing, Reading, Listening. Audiences and Cultural Reception; Cruz, J., Lewis, J., Eds.; Westview Press: Boulder, USA, 1994; pp. 253-274.

Barker, M. I have seen the future and it is not here yet…; Or, on being ambitious for audience research. Paper to ARSRP Conference, Paris, France, 2003. Available at: http://cadair.aber.ac.uk/dspace/bitstream/handle/2160/2224/I%20HAVE%20SEEN%20THE%20FUTURE%20AND%20IT%20IS%20NOT%20HERE%20YET.pdf;jsessionid=E58992E4420D78A123E37F8C55652F8F?sequence=1

Berg, M. Social intermediaries and the location of agency: A conceptual reconfiguration of social network sites. Contemporary Social Science: Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences 2012, 7:3, 1-13.

Gurevitch, M.; Scannell, P. Canonization achieved? Stuart Hall’s ‘encoding/decoding’. In Canonic Texts in Media Research; Katz, E., Peters, J.D., Liebes, T., Orloff, A., Eds.; Polity Press: Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2003; pp. 231-247.

Hall, S. Encoding and decoding in the television discourse. CCCS Stencilled Paper no. 7. 1973. Available at: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/Documents/college-artslaw/history/cccs/stencilled-occasionalpapers/1to8and11to24and38to48/SOP07.pdf

Hall, S. Encoding/decoding. In Culture, Media, Language. Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79; Hall, S., Hobson, D., Lowe, A., Willis, P., Eds.; CCCS/Routledge: London, United Kingdom, 1980; pp. 128-138.

Joinson, A. N. ‘Looking at’, ‘looking up’ or ‘keeping up with’ people? Motives and uses of Facebook. Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Florence, Italy, April 5-10 2008. Available at: http://digitalintelligencetoday.com/downloads/Joinson_Facebook.pdf.

Morley, D. The ‘Nationwide’ Audience. BFI: London, United Kingdom, 1980.

Morley, D. The ‘nationwide’ audience – A critical postscript. Screen Education 1981, 39, 3-14.

Morley, D. Unanswered questions in audience research. e-compos 2006. Available at: http://compos.org.br/seer/index.php/e-compos/article/viewFile/76/76

Pillai, P. Rereading Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model. Communication Theory 1992, 2:3, 221-233.

Ridell, S. Elämää Facebookin ihmemaassa: Sosiaalinen verkkosivusto käyttäjiensä kokemana. Tampereen yliopisto, Viestinnän, median ja teatterin yksikkö: Tampere, Finland 2011.

Schrøder, K. C. Making sense of audience discourses: Towards a multidimensional model of mass media reception. European Journal of Cultural Studies 2000, 3:2, 233-258.

van Dijck, J. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. Oxford University Press: Oxford, United Kingdom, 2013.

Introduction

Ubiquitous computing is a topic in sciences for almost 3 decades and there are the very first application of ubiquitous computing in real life. People wish with ubiquitous computing to ease in work and allday routines, they hope for a rise of security and to extended their senses and memory. Every day objects would have sensors and/or RFID-tags. These sensors and RFID-tags can be read ubiquitously and personal data are inquired, computed and/or stored. Ubiquitous computing needs an infrastructure of ubiquitous surveillance.

In the future many participants, in constantly changing settings, with manifold goals in very different contexts will take part in ubiquitous computing. Systems will organize them selves, unnoticed by the ones affected, and mysterious for them.

Privacy laws of today hold for situations with few participants in their straight defined roles. They claim to establish transparency, attachments, needs, control abilities, and participation of the affected ones. But these laws are not made for situations with many participants, in a variaty of constantly changing rules, under different goals in each role. Privacy laws must accommodate to the needs of ubiquitous computing to realize a right to informational selfdetermination (9).

New Privacy Laws should address the following principles:

1. data should be fair and be computed law-abiding,
2. data should only computed on their purpose,
3. data should be appropriate, relevant and not excessive,
4. data should be precise and up-to-date,
5. data should remain as local as possible,
6. data shouldn’t be stored longer than necessary,
7. appropriate punishments must be possible (11).

To realize all this in ubiquitous computing, it is necessary to integrate privacy principles into the technology. In networks of sensors and RFID-Systems privacy is ment to the appropriate handling and transfer of the ubiquitous surveillance infrastructures they realize (9).

Surveillance has allways to faces. It is necessary and supportive for securety, crime prevention and crime detection. On the other hand surveillance changes behaviour, people fell unfree and inhibited (6,7). Because of the latter people will stay anonymous in public spaces (6, 11). Concepts like the principle of agreeing with the gethering, computing and storing of data, like we know it today, didn’t function in the context of ubiquitous surveillance. “If I couldn’t buy some thing to eat without surveillance, how can the acceptance be free?”(6). In future the Focus of privacy law should be more to the person than to the data. Privacy in ubiquitous computing and surveillance is more and more a problem of anonymity and untraceability. But anonymity of users and untraceability of each kind of “items of interest” would make a lot of applications of ubiquitos computing impossible. Though anonymity and untraceability are only senseless against attackers and not the legal users of surveillance. The legality of surveillance in ubiquitous computing and surveillance is to be ruled out in privacy law.

Anonymity

From the view of technology anonymity is the state of non identifiability within a set of subjects (e. g. people) the anonymity set. The anonymity set is a set of subjects which are able to trigger actions and/or which are addressed by actions. I. e. subjects are sender or receiver within a set of senders respectively a set of receivers. If a attacker is unable to identify the connection between a single user and a specific sender resepctively to receiver, then the user is anonymous. Anonymity is not the anonymity of senders and receivers, it’s the anonymity of users (8).

Welbourne et. al. have engineered tools for RFID-Systems with which users can delete the data the system has stored about them. The user can easily implement rules about who should read which data when, and which concatenations the system is allowed to do. With this it is possible to implement anonymity (“nobody is allowed to read personal data”), but the system functions nevertheless. Also the requirements of systems and authorities can be implemented and recorded. This is an example for technologies with which anonymity can be implemented in ubiquitous computing and ubiquitous surveillance (12).

Untraceability

Also untraceability is described from a technological view here. Therefore we define Data, Entities, Identities, Users, Objekts, Subjects, Services, Ressources, and so on, or instances of them as Items of Interest (IOI). IOI are „things“ which an attacker is interested in. IOI are untraceable, if an attacker is unable to see a relation between two or more IOI’s or to trace an IOI in a network. For instance if in a Car to Car Safety Message System there is a message exchange, then messages has to be untraceable to one of the car’s such that there is no possiblity to trace the track of the car (10,2,5,1,3,8).

The same holds when clothes have RFID-tag’s on it and when they pass different readers in a while (4).

Untraceability in this way can be implemented as follows (4):

1. the reader sends a messag to the tag with a nouce-identifier N_R.
2. the tag generates a new nouce-identifier N_T and sends this, the encrypted tag-ID h(ID) und the encrypted nouce-identifier pair h_(ID)(N_R,N_T) back to the reader. The reader passes that triple to the application system. The application system decodes with the key h and computes with the known nouce-identifier N_R the nouce-Identifier N_T. With this the application can verify the ID of the tag.
3. If the application system accepts the tag, it computes a new tag-ID. The tag also computes a new tag-ID with the same algorithm. The application system with new tag-ID generates the encrypted message h_(ID+1)(N_T,N_R) and send this to the tag.
4. The tag evaluates the message and the new ID. If the received ID is the same as the ID computed by the tag, the old ID and the nouce-Identifier N_T are erased from the tag-store.

For an attacker the tag is untraceable, because it changes its ID with each message transfer. Traceability of the tag by the applicationsystem is still possible (4).

The above examples presented for implementing anonymity and untraceability show the possibility to implement privacy in ubiquitous systems as it is required by Roßnagel (9). Needed are the legal frameworks to require such privacy features in ubiquitous systems. By defining this sort of legal framework there should be answers to the following questions:

1. Who is the owner of the data an RFID-Reader explores and an application system computes and stores?
2. Are there marking obligations for items with RFID-tags on it (e.g. clothing, food)?
3. Is it necessary to require offical approval for the installation of RFID-readers and sensors?

When CCTV in public places appeared in the 1990’iesth Gras (6) showed that it is much more difficult to regulate and rule the use of technologie when already installed, than before installation and use. Therefore it is important that legislation keeps pace with technological progress.

References and Notes

1. Arapinis, M.;Chothia, T.;Ritter, E.;Ryan, M.: Analysing Unlinkability and Anonymity Using the Applied Pi Calculus http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~tpc/Papers/csf10.pdf, visited 16.12.14
2. Blues Team: Unverkettbarkeit und Pseudonymität in der digitalen Welt, http://blues.inf.tu-dresden.de/prime/EUT_Tutorial_V0/german/german/Content/Unit2/dig.%20unlink.htm, visited 16.12.14
3. Brusó, M.; Chatzikokolakis, K.;Etalle, S.; Den Hartog, J.: Linking Unlinkability https://hal.inria.fr/hal-00760150/PDF/Unlinkability.pdf, besucht am 16.12.14
4. Dimitriou, T: A Lightweight RFID Protocol to protect against Traceability an cloning attacks, http://www.ait.gr/export/TDIM/various/RFID-securecomm05.pdf, visited 18.2.15
5. Fischer, L.: Measuring Unlinkability for Privacy Enhancing Technologies, http://tuprints.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/2367/1/lars_fischer_dissertation.pdf, visited 16.12.14
6. Gras, M. L.: The Legal Regulaiton of CCTV in Europe, http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/viewFile/3375/3338, visited 17.02.15
7. Gerichtshof der Europäischen Union: „Der Gerichtshof erklärt die Richtlinie über die Vorratsspeicherung von Daten für ungültig“, http://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2014-04/cp140054de.pdf, visited 17.02.15
8. Pfitzmann, A.; Hansen, M.: Anonymity, Unlinkability, Unobservability, Pseudonymity, and Identity Management – A Consolidated Proposal for Terminology, http://freehaven.net/anonbib/cache/terminology.pdf, visited 16.12.14
9. Roßnagel, A.: Datenschutz in einem informatisierten Alltag, http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/stabsabteilung/04548.pdf, visited 19.11.14
10. Rost, M.; Pfitzmann, A.: Datenschutzziele, http://download.springer.com/static/pdf/814/art%253A10.1007%252Fs11623-009-0072-9.pdf?auth66=1416396902_c7935e6bcf15afa95108ffb192c1fd9f&ext=.pdf, visited 19.11.14
11. Taylor, N. : State Surveillance and the Right to Privacy, http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/viewFile/3394/3357, visited 17.02.15
12. Welbourne, E.; Battle, L.; Cole, G.; Gould, K.; Rector, K.; Raymer, S.; Balazinska, M.; Borriello, G.: Building the Internet of Things Using RFID, http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kyle_Rector/publication/220491250_Building_the_Internet_of_Things_Using_RFID_The_RFID_Ecosystem_Experience/links/0c960519d82721508d000000.pdf, visited 18.2.15

The processes of ontogenesis and evolution are based on perpetual changes in interpretation of information in the changing world. These changes lead to rescaling of internal time and of the spatial structure. Relative independence of the biological form from underlying molecular processes (including gene expression) can be considered as one of the major biological principles. It allows studying morphology as the transformation of geometry. This approach philosophically arises to Plato. D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson (1917) in his famous book “On Growth and Form” showed that transformations of coordinate system correspond to generation of forms specific for concrete biological species. He also mentioned that “morphology is not only a study of material things and of the forms of material things, but has its dynamical aspect, under which we deal with the interpretation, in terms of force, of the operations of Energy”.

The basic understanding of the space and symmetry of biological forms comes from the observation that it is essentially curvilinear, being more diverse and complex than any physical space-time. Leo Berg (1922) in his theory of nomogenesis claimed that the laws of evolution are based on the objective rules of symmetrical transformations of form that are independent from adaptability and natural selection. This approach is essentially Platonic. The concept that form is not “encoded” but rather unfolded within the whole organization can be discussed in relation to the basic principle that the whole system cannot be reduced to its internal description (genetic structures). To understand the actualization of form from the underlying phenomena, we need to go beyond the concept of genetic determination and analyze fundamental principles of biological organization based on percolation between different levels of physical reality from the basic quantum phenomena to the upper levels (Conrad, 1996). This corresponds to the actualization of potentia and represents the Aristotelian approach to understanding the biological form. Genes are, in fact, the subsets of metabolites in the autopoietic structure of biological system (Igamberdiev, 1999) stably reflecting proteins and their functions, while form appears beyond this reflection. It is a projection into 3D of the whole structure consisting of metabolites, enzymes and genes that bootstrap each other.

Nomothetic Constraints in the Generation of New Structures during Ontogenesis

There is no mathematical preference to any curvature. The existence of metrics, according to Riemann (1868), can be explained by certain external physical forces of connection that are applied to it. This is an example of imposing limitations on mathematical forms through application of physics, which is essentially the science about the limits of computation appearing to us as physical laws (Igamberdiev, 2007). These forces of connection are related to the discreteness of space, and form its actual observed structure. When there is no “active” observer concerned, the modeling of space-time results in the Euclidean geometry of the Newtonian space with the single unitary Cartesian coordinate system. When we consider the observer “actively” measuring space-time by signals with finite velocity, we come to Einstein’s relational space-time but with the equivalence of all coordinate systems. And when the effect of measurement is concerned, we come to the choice (generation) of a coordinate system and its transformation according to the search of a stable (homeostatic) state. This generates various structures described by the non-Euclidean geometry.

The development of morphogenetic patterns can be viewed as a sequence of unfolding patterns originating from previous states. We can study the unfolding pattern without reference to underlying phenomena. Nevertheless there should be something in the pattern of unfolding that refers to the system’s internal activity. We can distinguish an internally developing generic process from an external non-generic phenomenon through certain proportions in the generated structure, which represent the limits of iteration exhibiting an internal process. Any internal choice exhibits a structure of the mixing the notion of indicating an element with the act of indicating a set consisting of elements (Igamberdiev, 2004). Rosen (1993) noted that physically embodied reflective loops have certain objective parameters that include the values that can be redundantly repeated. This leads to a topological inevitability of certain developmental processes so that the topological singularities inevitably emerge in biological morphogenesis, and are retained and transformed during pattern formation (Isaeva et al., 2014).

Certain transition rules are used recursively along time and generate fixed points (the points of coincidence of the image and its reflection). During this process, the development is collapsed into the fractal spatiotemporal structure (Gunji et al., 1997). According to this approach, the fixed point x for the operation of determination of A and A⁻, denoted by F can be expressed as an infinite recursion, x = F(F(F(. . . F(x). . . ))), by mapping x = F(x) onto x = F(x) and presented as a point in two-dimensional space. The operation of F is the contraction in a two-dimensional domain, indicating either A or A⁻ (Kitabayashi et al., 1999). If validity of A is denoted by m, the invariance of validity with respect to contraction is expressed as f(m)∗m = constant, where m is the value of validity and f(m) is the probability of m. If distribution of f(m) does not have an off-set peak, m directly means the rank. Then f(m)∗m = c represents what is called the Zipf’s law, i.e. log(f(m)) = −log(m) + c.

In biological morphogenesis, the preceding motif unit is transferred into the subsequent one by a certain fixed similarity transformation g, i.e., F_n+1 =g∗F_n. The finite representation of actualization forms a coordinate scale inherent to any individual morphological form. These coordinate scales can be transformed by simple recursive rules via rescaling (Thompson d’Arcy, 1917). The limit of actualization fits optimality of the structure being actualized, thus it provides the existence of optimal solutions for design. If we take the simplest and most general way of transformation when a new domain is composed of two previous (two-dimensional transformation), the two sequential values are composed to get the third value. Thus the next value is composed from the two previous values when they are memorized: F_n+2 = F_n + F_n+1. This means that certain recursive limits appear as fundamental parameters of memorization in the course of unfolding process. In many cases of biological morphogenesis the configuration of golden section is realized as the limit (n→∞) of this process:

Φ = lim (F_n+1/F_n) = (1 + 5½) / 2 = 1.618…

The solution for F_n depends only on the number of recursions addressing the fixed point and described by the Fibonacci number formula:

F_n = [(1 + 5½)ⁿ − (1 − 5½)ⁿ] / (2ⁿ × 5½)

The Fibonacci numbers represent possible solutions for morphogenetic problems, as numbers of ways of picking sets in recursive process with the formation of corresponding spatial patterns. Important series (referring to three-dimensional unfolding) appear when three neighboring elements F_n, F_n+1, F_n+2 of the Fibonacci are taken as lengths of three sequential segments (as appeared in the sequential past (t − 1), present (t) and future (t + 1) times). They represent the ratio defined as the wurf having its “golden wurf” limit W (Petukhov, 1989):

W = lim (F_n + F_n+1)(F_n+1 + F_n+2)/[F_n+1(F_n + F_n+1 + F_n+2)] = Φ²/2 = (3 + 5½) / 4 = 1.309

The value of golden wurf arises from the combination of three sequential segments with the values 1, Φ and Φ², i.e. it follows from the memorization of limits of recursion in the Fibonacci series (Petukhov, 1989). The golden section and the golden wurf constants represent fundamental values of infinite recursion, when the next element is formed by the operation on the sequentially appearing elements within the reflective loop, and occur in many morphogenetic patterns.

Nomothetic Constraints in the Generation of New Structures during Evolution

Nomothetic constraints of the evolutionary process and the evolutionary variability follow certain rules that can be called nomothetical laws and analyzed as symmetrical transformations (Meyen, 1973). E.g., in leaf evolution some transitions are possible, other transitions are less probable and some are prohibited. The probability of transition depends on stage of development, on evolutionary position of species and on their geographical location. The sequence of evolutionary transitions of a certain structure can be viewed as a recursion process called “refrain” by Meyen (1973) and lead to generation of repeated polymorphic sets.

This type of recursion follows the principle of self-similarity in which the quantitative invariants may not conserve but the qualitative (e.g. topological) characteristics will be preserved. The simplest and most general way of transformation occurs when the new domain is composed of two previous (Igamberdiev, 2004). In this process, the evolving state is determined by the two contradictory values of the system separated by time interval, and the value in time future is acquired after addressing them. Two contradictory statements taken as sequential values separated by time interval are composed to get the third statement. Thus the next statement (quantitatively modeled as having correspondent value) is composed from the two previous statements when they are memorized as real numbers in the course of recursive process: F_n+2 = F_n + F_n+1. In this case, certain recursive limits will appear as fundamental canons of perfection formed as memorization within reflective loops, corresponding to symmetry transformations. The notion of golden section (Φ = lim F_n+1/F_n), which commonly appears in biological patterns formation, follows from this type of memorization (Igamberdiev, 2004).

Symmetry transformations in morphogenesis and evolution are determined by the pre-existing information that shapes possible combinatorial limits. In the course of biological transformations, the changes are introduced in genomes, but still the changes in interpretation remain more meaningful than the changes in genetic information itself. The process of interpretation of information includes a complementary interaction of the digital information (encoding) with the non-digital information (templating) which reads (decodes) the code (i.e., realizes the reflective action). The interaction between these two types of information non-recursively forms an interpretant for the semiotic system of living being. The information based on specific recognitions triggering the dynamical energy-driven processes appears as non-digital; the transfer of digital information is realized within hypercycles and corresponds to operation of the genetic code. Changing of interpretation corresponds to symmetry transformation in biological system.

Conclusion

The systems having embedded internal description are, according to Rosen, anticipatory in the sense that the embedded description generates models of their behavior. If the model does not provide a correct result, they can evolve due to acquisition of new statements inside the embedded description that overcome limitations of the existing model. Generation of new statements has its logical precondition in the incompleteness of internal formal system of biosystem. The newly generated statements are empowered by meanings in the changing environment. The growth of complexity generates nomothetic patterns of spatiotemporal structures of evolving systems. These patterns reproduce certain optimal proportions during their realizations such as the golden ratio. Thus living systems have their internal times, and in the course of morphogenesis and evolution, time rescaling takes place. The processes of time rescaling are triggered in epigenetic evolution by the biospheric parameters causing time shift in metabolic processes and in genome mobility (Igamberdiev, 2014). This corresponds to symmetry transformations in which changes of interpretation of information occur that drive further changes towards the evolutionary growth of complexity.  

References

1. Berg, L.S. Nomogenesis; or, Evolution Determined by Law.I.T. Press, Cambridge, 1922-1969.
2. Conrad, M. Cross-scale information processing in evolution, development and intelligence. Biosystems 1996, 38, 97–109.
3. Gunji, Y.-P., Ito, K., Kusunoki, Y. Formal model of internal measurement: Alternate changing between recursive definition and domain equation. Physica D 1997, 110, 289-312.
4. Igamberdiev, A.U. Quantum computation, non-demolition measurements, and reflective control in living systems. Biosystems 2004, 77, 47–56.
5. Igamberdiev, A.U. Physical limits of computation and emergence of life. Biosystems 2007, 90, 340–349.
6. Igamberdiev, A.U. Time rescaling and pattern formation in biological evolution. Biosystems 2014, 123, 19-26.
7. Isaeva, V.V., Kasyanov, N.V., Presnov, E.V. Topological and physical constraints and directions in biological morphogenesis. Biosystems 2012, 109, 280-298.
8. Kitabayashi, N., Kusunoki, Y., Gunji, Y.P. The emergence of the concept of a tool in food-retrieving behavior of the ants Formica japonica Motschulsky. Biosystems 1999, 50, 143-156.
9. Meyen, S.V. Plant morphology in its nomothetical aspects. Botanical Review 1973, 39, 205–260.
10. Petukhov, S.V. Non-Euclidean geometries and algorithms of living bodies. Computers and Mathematics with Applications 1989, 17, 505-534.
11. Riemann, B. Collected Papers. Kendrick Press, Heber City, UT, 1868-2004.
12. Rosen, R. Drawing the boundary between subject and object – comments on the mind-brain problem. Theoretical Medicine 1993, 14, 89–100.
13. Thompson D’Arcy, W. On Growth and Form. Cambridge University Press, London, 1917.

Introduction

Stanley Kubrick's movie, Paths of Glory, can be summed up in one statement made by Kirk Douglas. ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’. With the quote by Samuel Johnson (1775), Kirk Douglas captures the fatigue and pointlessness of the First World War trenches. This problematizing of patriotism and the lessons of the early 20^th c European history seem to have been lost. In the 21^st c. patriotism is widely accepted and generally considered unproblematic. This paper aims to show that patriotism on Facebook should be problematic since it has become the last refuge of the racist.

Discussion

In Europe, there is a well-documented rise of the far right with a patriotic Europeanist discourse (e.g. Caiani et al., 2012)). This is accompanied by an intense presence and activity of the European Far Right on Social Media (Caiani and Wagemann, 2009). This presence has not gone unnoticed. White supremacist and racist groups have been targeted by anti-racist groups due to the use of hate speech. These put pressure on social media corporations to actIn social media therefore, the forms taken by hate speech is increasingly shaped by Facebook and Twitter terms of service and community standards and by individuals and organisations whose will is to ‘stop racism’ or at least stop the process of spreading hate through social media. The Far Right, in order to maintain its activity on social media must learn how to navigate through the community standards and through the anti-racist group activity. One way in which they can accomplish this is by shifting the discourse using the vocabulary of protection, human rights and for 'what it is ours', 'what belong to us' and ‘loving one’s own’. As Les Back put it, ‘the language of hate is increasingly being articulated through invocations of love’ (2002b: 1)

A broad definition of patriotism is precisely the ‘love of one’s own’. In his well-known critique of Nathanson's work “In Defense of 'Moderate Patriotism", Gomberg exposes the role of patriotism in legitimating racism. Nathanson (1989) tries to show that there is a moderate patriotism that does not collapse into an unpatriotic universal morality. Gomberg’s point is that there is no possible alternative between chauvinist patriotism and unpatriotic universalism (Gomberg 1990).   To fight for you 'own nation' when the compromise is impossible or conflict unavoidable implies the given of a greater value to one's own national traditions than those of other nationalities. And this is no more than racism. In the most plausible assumptions about our world patriotism is no better than racism (Gomberg 1990).

Gomber’s arguments acquire more credence when one looks at the prominence but also the work undertaken by patriotic Facebook pages. Facebook patriotic pages, which in this paper we refer to as Facebook Postcards, has become the last refuge of the racist.

The study presented in this paper shows empirical evidence of how Spanish, Greek and Irish far right groups and far right followers have found a digital space on Facebook where no national legislation or Facebook Terms of Services can prevent the use of hate speech, racist discourse, Islamophobic sentiment as it appears in the guise of patriotism, thereby remaining unchallenged. This paper refers to what it can be coined as 'digital postcards' Facebook pages. These pages aim to show the beauty of a nation, a region or a city, its nature, myths and traditions. Postcard Facebook pages are digital lands outside national legislation in relation to hate speech and outside Facebook’s community standards regulations. Functioning as a tourist or photographic showrooms, 'postcard nation' Facebook pages remain a tranquil space where far right groups and potential far right followers can easily meet and interact, and where racist speech, information and discussions based on hate can easily spread. These arguments are pursued based on three separate examples of Facebook Postcards from Greece, Spain and Ireland.

In the case of Greece the analysis focuses on https://el-gr.facebook.com/EimaiEllinasEtsiGoustarw, (I am Greek and that’s how I like it). This page has 108,000 likes and enjoys a relatively high visibility addressing Greeks’ with general comments and news.

In the case of Spain the focus is on the Facebook page Espania, que bonita eres (Spain, how beautiful you are) https://www.facebook.com/ABCDE24678909 . With over 80 thousand followers the page was open in July 2011 and it claims to host generalist content.

In the case of Ireland the selected page is called Waterford City & County, Ireland. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Waterford-City-County-Ireland/1488943764699629?fref=ts . Waterford is a County on the southern-east of Ireland and it is one of the most affected areas for the recession. Last November 2014, Waterford experienced a racist outbreak against a family of Roma. Over 200 people congregated in front of a Roma Family house. The mobilization was organised on Facebook and it can be tracked down from explicit racist to Waterford City & County passing by The Kilkenny Journal https://www.facebook.com/groups/kilkennyjournal/?fref=ts .

The analysis of the three pages canters on: a) general description of the page, based on the information provided by the administrators. This first analysis will enable us to understand how it articulates itself in relation with Facebook Terms of Services and Community Policies b) The structure of the page in term on restrictions for the users to use the wall. By observing the restrictions of the page we can obtain information about the role of the administrator c) Users participation, discussions and content particularly in relation to national topics, migration and islamophobia. The aim of the research to analyse the discussion that the pages are hosting in relation with migration and hate racist speech and the level of acceptance of this discourses d) The functions of these sites such as propaganda, recruitment, humanizing racism articulating economic problems trough ‘ethnicity’ discourses, and so on.

The national context of each country remains important to understand the nature of the Facebook postcard page. As a comparative dimension, national context provides insights about the use of social media. In the case of Greece evidences coming from interviews with Golden Dawn members and anti-racist activists, suggests that Golden Doawn members or affiliates are involved in Facebook postal cards. Both legal and anti-racist activities have shaped a Golden Dawn communication strategy which seems to be performed differently online than offline in terms of hate speech. In the case of Spain and considering the influence and power of far right political groups, it is dubious that any formal organization is behind the analysed Facebook postcard page; however, the page is sizing its number of followers significantly, improving the possibilities of functioning as a place for far right groups targeting potential voters. Finally, in the case of Ireland, there is no far right political party at the moment. What can be found in this context is a Facebook base group called Irish Voice whose performance is purely online and whose speech has been persecuted by anti-racist networks.

Conclusions

The study presented in this papers shows empirical evidences of how Spanish, Greek and Irish far right groups and far right followers have found a digital space on Facebook where racist discourse , Islamophobic sentiment and far right organisations can be hosted. Presented as patriotism, pages that appear as ‘Facebook Postcards’ have become the last refuge of the racist. The implications of Facebook on the perpetuation of racism are rooted in its design. Facebook is understood as a technological expression that facilitates and perpetuates the modern project and the idea of modern nation states. Facebook design does not innovate or create any sort of evolution on how humans interact. If any, it has amplified and multiplied the offline reality emphasizing the idea of groups of people of determined characteristics or associations. Social media are made out of concepts, values, categorizations and systems of power and control that already operate in our offline existence and in consequence it can be said that racism on social media is structural (c.f. Feenberg, 2003). To this extent, it is inevitable that attempts to control the appearance and manifestation of racism online will always have limited and temporary success. The activity of anti-racist groups on Facebook is well intended and necessary as they create counter narratives, but we have to assume that we are fighting against the Hydra; where one head is cut, two more will grow.

References and Notes

Atton, Chris. Far-right media on the Internet:Culture, Discoure and Power. In All Alternative Internet. Racial Media, Politics and Creativity. Ed Chris AttonEdingburgh University Press. Edingburg 2004 pp.61-88.

Back, Les. Aryans Reading Adorno: cyber culture and twenty-first- century racism. Ethnic and Racial Studies Vol 25 N4 July 2002. pp 628-651.

Berger, L Peter. Facing Up to Modernity, Penguin Books ltd. England 1977.

Caiani, Manuela, and Claudius Wagemann. "ONLINE NETWORKS OF THE ITALIAN AND GERMAN EXTREME RIGHT: An explorative study with social network analysis 1." Information, Communication & Society 12.1 (2009): 66-109.

Caiani, Manuela, Donatella Della Porta, and Claudius Wagemann. Mobilizing on the extreme right: Germany, Italy, and the United States. Oxford University Press, 2012.

Enghelhardt Juliane Patriotism, nationalism and modernity: the patriotic societies in the Danish conglomerate state, 1769–1814 Nations and Nationalism. 2007 Volume 13, Issue 2, pages 205–223

Feengberg, Andrew. Modernity and Technology. Reflections on Bridging the Gap In Modernity and Technology Ed Thomas J. Misa, Philip Brey and Andrew Feengberg. Masachusetts Insititute of Technology. USA. 2003. pp73-104

Gomber Paul Patriotism is like Racism, Ethics, Vol101, No 1 Oct, 1990 The university of Chicago Press pp 144.150

Nathanson, Stephen. "In Defense of" Moderate Patriotism"." Ethics (1989): 535-552.

Sassen Saskia. Towards a Sociology on Information Technology. Current Sociology 2002 SAGE Vol 50(3) 365-388

Sholle David. Disorganizing the ‘New technology’. In Critical Perspectives on the internet . Ed Gregg Elmer Rowmand &Littlefield publishers INC USA. 2002. pp 3-26

Sterne Jonathan. Thinking the Internet. Cultural Studies Versus the Millennium. In Doing Internet Reesearch. Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net. Ed Steve Jones.SAGE Publications. . USA 1999.

Introduction

Music represents a knowledge about the wholeness and unity of the word. In contrast to other arts, music is prolonged and organized in time. It can be viewed as a reflection from the infinity (potential field) into the finite set of sounds. The potential field in music texts was analyzed by Arkadiev (1993) who suggested that music appears as a structuralized silence, and that the silent accents in music play even more important roles than its sounds. The potential field is always a contradictory set of possible realizations; therefore it is silent per se. This set is realized in music creation as the process of appearance of sounds that is organized in time. The most striking example of quasi-rationality of such a process is a fugue where the musical composition becomes similar to mathematical creativity. The same pattern of realizations as in music appears in the quantum mechanical measurement where those histories become actualized that are consistent, and the condition of consistency becomes the basic prerequisite of the actual existence. Thus the whole world appears as symphonic and its pattern includes polyphony as its fundamental background.

Mathematics and music were considered as similar arts in the Pythagorean philosophy. Music can be more rational in its structure in baroque and classicism or more irrational in romanticism. It may be rational in form, but as a reflection of infinity it cannot be finitely countable. Mathematics deals with finite processes that are the limits of iteration of infinite processes. But because of the paradoxical properties of time (described in Zeno’s aporia “Achilles and Tortoise”), these limits can be realized within finite durations of time, which itself cannot be resolved by finite means. And without these paradoxes music may not exist. Limits of iteration are present in the musical structure. One of these limits is the golden section which can be considered as a limit of iteration in reflective measurements (Lefebvre 1990, 1995). Lefebvre (1995) has shown in the detail analysis that the golden section is important in the European musical tradition.

Fugal Reflection of the Logical and the Physical Realities

For Pythagoras and Plato, the ‘techne mousike’ is a mathematical (from the modern point of view, we would rather say meta-mathematical) experience. The idea that music can govern over human, natural and divine forces situates music as a metaphysic discipline related to cosmology and social being. Pythagoras indeed was convinced in a kind of universal cosmic harmony; he thought that music is able to take us from the world of becoming into the world of being. This was later revived by Leibniz in the letter to Goldbach: Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi [Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting]. On the other hand, Aristotle analyzed music within the horizon of ‘practical philosophy’ contrary to Pythagoras: music intends to “produce” (poiesis) something which is related to ‘ethical character’ and has a cathartic (or cleaning) effect on the soul. In his views, music is more as an ethic and less as a pure mathematic activity.

The same context exists in relation to J.S. Bach and L. van Beethoven. I do not analyze here Mozart because his music aims to escape from such analysis. It images the divine link between the two realities, the logical and the physical, and somehow escapes the battle between nominalism and realism. Mozart represents such a wonderful unity that is usually easy to listen but very difficult to interpret. In J.S. Bach’s music is the Logos that governs (the ideal world of Pythagoras and Plato), and in Beethoven’s music the Physis (real world of Aristotle) exhibits itself, while Mozart represents that Elusive (fugacior in Latin), which unites them both and is personified as a Holy Spirit in the Christian tradition or as Eros in Plato’s philosophy. Following Heraclitus, the same essence appears in thought as Logos, in world as Fire, and altogether as Cosmos.

Fugue is one of the most complicated, if not the most complicated, forms of music ever created. J.S. Bach practically invented fugue, and in the space of one work, "Die Kunst der Fuge", perfected it beyond any comparison. It is logical to compare Bach’s die Kunst der Fuge and Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge. Both can be considered as the greatest exercises of each composer. However Bach exercised in the area of Logos where he faced the impossibility to bring the conclusion to the final contrapunctus of Art of Fugue. Beethoven’s area is rather Physis or the embodiment of Logos in the immanent reality. J.S. Bach’s music represents the internal creative logic of thought while Beethoven reflects and recreates the process of implementation of thought into the real world.

Fugue and the Search of Semantic Closure

It is important to say few words about the fugal structure to approach the problem of semantic closure. The expression of wisdom can be always fugal (Grew, 1931) because the fugal structure bears the knowledge and the power together. In the motion to understand the world, Bach expresses the achievement of a meta-mathematical construction, while Beethoven analyses the act of achieving. As a result, the two ideas (knowledge and power) in the end prove to be the one. Beethoven’s fugues are all about Physis, i.e. they refer to the patterns of fitting together in the evolving network of non-equivalent observers, while Bach’s fugues are about Logos and refer to the contradictory structure of thought. In Beethoven’s music, the fugue is a “feast of mind” according to Sviatoslav Richter – we would say, of the mind acting within the immanent physical space-time.

This acting can be formulated as the problem of semantic closure of the world that includes the subject observing it and acting in it. Can the image of the world be produced that includes the observer as a part of the image? Bach’s last opus shows that it is rather impossible to solve the problem of semantic closure after inclusion of the observing subject in the field of the Logos. But this problem is the basic challenge of the physical universe where it is perpetually and relationally solved. Beethoven’s greatest and rather negative answer is in Hammerklavier (29th sonata, Die Grosse Sonata für Hammerklavier, op. 106). It is finished by the fugue imaging the world without final semantic closure. This solution could be considered as final for other composers (as it is appears with a stronger sense of negativity in the best musical compositions of the XX century), but Beethoven could not leave this open, i.e. he could not leave the world unresolved. Alternatively, the Grosse Fuge starts from the instant finding of the final solution of world’s meaningful completeness and in the further development this solution is consistently analyzed and affirmed as a free solution of the existence of the habitable, perceptible and cognizable world.

The substantial difference between the worlds of mathematics and physics is not trivial. The view exists that everything that can be computed may be present in the physical Universe (Tegmark, 2007). However, in real physical world, only few solutions are realized as consistent histories (Igamberdiev, 2007). The mathematical reality can be referred to Logos (λογος), while the physical reality is defined as Physis (φυσις) in terms of Greek philosophy. The relation between Logos and Physis is based on a fragile correspondence, where Logos is interpreted in Physis, while Physis becomes in certain limits and in its temporal frames non-contradictory by holding Logos in it. Thus we have the basic triadic structure, where Logos signifies Physis, Physis is signified by Logos, and their relation is an Interpretant that in a particular case can be represented by the acting observer. This all is united in a triadic structure which is reflected in the Peircean sign (Peirce, 1955). It includes two material causes (between the object and the sign-representamen, and between the sign and the interpretant).

To exist, the world should be closed by including potentially its observer. It forms a closed structure where the reflection makes it complete. But this completed structure being physical can exist for a limited period of time in which it can hold paradox and which separates contradictory statements. After that time is passed, “global system’s failure” takes place (Rosen, 1978). The Divine completion in the infinity in the physical world is reflected in temporal completion of a living being (autopoietic system). This temporal completion has not yet received its final formalized expression in metamathematics but it was described by informal means in the Peircean semiotics.

Beethoven's Grosse Fuge and the Future Development of Music

Glenn Gould considered the Grosse Fuge as “the ultimate inductive piece” which is “the most far-sighted piece of music ever written”. The Grosse Fuge expresses the “striving against near-impossible odds” as Richard Wigmore mentioned. These near impossible odds are kept in the structure in a way that they are being overcome in approving the stable fugal initial structure. This is the great approach and it is indeed different from the development that we observe in the XX century. The XX century came to the understanding of greatness of this composition that was almost completely absent in the XIX century. But the XX century music, while having accepted the odds, also accepted the absence of the escape from them. Arnold Schoenberg heard it as a premonition of atonality, a call for freedom from convention. (“Your cradle was Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge,” Oskar Kokoschka once said to Schoenberg.)

Dodecaphony came as an alternative structure for music based on these odds included in its basis. Especially in the music of Anton Webern, we see the ultimate metalogical structure for this, and this structure simulates nothingness as the basis for the world. The most dodecaphonic Shostakovich quartets 12 (op. 133) and 13 (op. 138) are influenced by Grosse Fuge: they do not bear the religious revelation of Grosse Fuge but realize the reflection into nothingness. In the 12th Quartet, the “optimistic” final looks as somehow externally exposed. In the 13th Quartet even this is absent and the nothingness bears its own solution. The cathartic revelation comes only from sensing of the fundamental substantial absence.

On the other hand, the attention of Dmitry Shostakovich to Grosse Fuge comes from the embodiment of his music into the real world, which is similar to Beethovenian. The evil in the real world is much more powerful but not omnipotent in Shostakovich’s music and it can be overcome at least via ultimate preservation of the dignity by the suffering individual soul, and so there is a possibility of a way that can lead to the basic solution overcoming evil. It is important to mention that Shostakovich had plans of writing the 16th Quartet which should contain a big fugue as a finale (mentioned in his correspondence with Krzysztof Meyer).

In this tendency and desire, Shostakovich is similar to Beethoven and more different from Alfred Schnittke. Grosse Fuge is quoted in Alfred Schnittke's Third String Quartet, but in the music of Schnittke the infernal reality is rather more like a negative reflection of the Cosmos and in this regard it is infinite, so there is no way of escaping from it. The great belief in the possibility of the ultimate escape to overcome incompleteness accompanies the development of human civilization, although there no final solution can be achieved in this profound movement. But the formulation of substantiality of searching for such solution is a great desire by itself that is reflected in the highest achievements of art, science and philosophy.

Conclusion

The attempt of Beethoven needs a profound understanding its chronotope (the term of M.M. Bakhtin who by himself viewed the world as polyphonic). The monologic way of perceiving cognition and truth is only one of the possible ways. It arises only where consciousness is placed above existence (Bakhtin, 1984). Non-equivalent observers form the uneven continuum of the visible world and the final truth of this world arises above the individual truths of them but including these truths in the final ultimate solution.

Beethoven suggests a solution with the world of freedom having a kind of the semantic completeness. J.S. Bach searched for a Pythagorean solution of completeness of the Universe that includes self… and broke into silence. Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge gives us an example of the exercise that ultimately leads to overcoming all near-impossible odds. It substantiates the world and leads us to finding the explanation to it. This is the only complete example of the music and maybe of the whole art that represents the world where the solution for its semantic closure is found, at least in the context of exercise having the balance of strict rules and extensive freedom. Grosse Fuge in certain sense is the only example of non-utopic achievement of completeness of the real world. The solution outlined in the Grosse Fuge requires its profound and congruent meta-mathematical analysis, in the same way as Gilbert’s problems and Gödel’s theorems are congruent to J.S. Bach’s universe. Approaches to the logic of creative construction were developed in the intuitionistic mathematics of L.E.J. Brower, in the topoic logic, and in C.S. Peirce’s semiotics and algebra. The latter introduces the ultimate reflective statement that makes the mathematical construction complete. The substantiation of this completeness is a great task, which is in fact a substantiation of the link connecting mathematical equations to the physical world. In all cases the enclosing element is difficult to formulate. This element represents the infinite interpretant embodied as a finite sign. Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge in its structure explicitly contains this interpretant and therefore represents the desire of the ultimate great solution that remains in the solitude among the greatest buildings of the human civilization, and in this solitude reflects another solitary peak of J.S. Bach’s die Kunst der Fuge.

References

1. Arkadiev, M.A. Structures of Time in New European Music (An essay of phenomenological study). Biblos, Moscow, 1993.
2. Bakhtin, M.M. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Edited and translated by Caryl Emerson. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1984.
3. Grew, S. Beethoven’s “Grosse Fuge”. The Musical Quarterly 1931, 17, 497-508.
4. Igamberdiev, A.U. Physical limits of computation and emergence of life. Biosystems 2007, 90, 340–349.
5. Lefebvre, V.A. The fundamental structures of human reflexion. In: American University Studies, Series 8, Psychology, vol. 17, Harvey Wheeler (ed.), pp. 5-70. Peter Lang, New York, 1990.
6. Lefebvre, V.A. The anthropic principle in psychology and human choice. Psycoloquy 1995, 6,
7. Peirce, C.S. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1‐8 (C. Hartshorn, P. Weiss, A.W. Burks, eds.). Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1931‐1958.
8. Rosen, R. Feedforwards and global system failure – general mechanism for senescence. Journal of Theoretical Biology 1978, 74, 579-590.
9. Tegmark, M. The Mathematical Universe. Foundations of Physics 2007, 38, 101-150.

Introduction

Human existence is being transformed. Its structure, many thousand years old, seems to be changing: built on the natural and the social, there is a third form of existence: web-life. Man is now the citizen of three worlds, and its nature is being formed by the relations of natural, social and web-life. We regard as our main goal the study of web-life which developed as the result of internet use.

Emerging Web-Life

In order to study the mostly unknown context of web-life it seems to be useful to examine the nature of human existence, transformed through Internet use and the consequences of the changes. Social scientists like Castells [1], Wellman and Haythornthweait [2], or Fuchs [3] often characterize the consequences of the Internet use as pure social changes, including all kinds of changes into the social ones and disregard the significance of more comprehensive changes. We focus on the latter.

While using the Internet, all determining factors and identity forming relations change which had a role in the evolution of mankind from the animal kingdom and in the process of the development of society. We can identify tool use, language, consciousness, thought as well as social relationships as the most decisive changes in the process of becoming human and in the formation of web-life which developed as a result of Internet use.

The simultaneous transformations of animal tool and language use, animal consciousness and thought as well as social relationships and the series of interwoven changes led to the evolution of humans and to the development of culture and society. Nowadays, the robust changes in the same areas are also simultaneous. They point into one direction intensifying each other and induce an interconnected series of changes. Te quantity of the changes affecting the circumstances of human existence results yet again in the qualitative transformation of the circumstances of existence: this is the process of the development of web-life.

The material circumstances of tool making and tool use lose their significance and the emphasis is now on the most essential part of the process: interpretation. A crucial part of tool making is the interpretation of an entity in a different context, as different from the given (such as natural entities) and in this “technological situation” its identification as a tool. During Internet usage, individual interpretations play a central role in the process of creating and processing information on different levels and in the information technologies that are becoming dominant. At the same time the material processes that provide the conditions of interpretation are to a large extent taken care of by machines. Hermeneutics takes the central role of energetics in the necessary human activity of reproducing human relations.

The human double (and later multiple) representation strategy developed from the simpler strategies of the representation characteristic of wildlife led to language, consciousness, thought and culture. Double representation (I can regard an entity both as “itself” and “something else” at the same time) is a basic procedure in all these processes – and in tool making as well – and an indispensable condition of their occurrence. The use of the Internet radically transforms the circumstances of interpretation. On the one hand, it creates a new medium of representation, in which – as in some sort of global “mind” – the whole world of man is represented repeatedly. On the other hand, after the ages of orality and literacy it makes it possible basically for all people to produce and use in an intended way the visual representation of their own world as well. Virtuality and visuality are determining characteristics of representation. We are living in the process of the transformation of language, speech, reading and writing, memory and thought.

“Traditional” human culture is created through the reinterpretation of the relations “given by nature”, it materializes through their perpetual transformation and it becomes a decisive factor in the prevailing social relations. Cyber-cultural practices of the citizens of the web is now directed at the revaluation of social relations, and as a result of their activities a cyber, web or Internet-cultural system of relations is formed, which is the decisive factor in the circumstances of web-life.

The basically naturally given communities of animal partnership were replaced by the human structure of communities which was practically organized as a consequence of the tool use based indirect, and language use based direct communicative acts. However, the control over communicative situations can be monopolized by various agents: as a result it is burdened with countless constraints. The nature of the communities that come into existence under these circumstances can become independent from the aspirations of the participants: various forms of alienation and inequality can be generated and reproduced in the communities. The citizen of the web who engages in communication reinterprets and transforms communicative situations; above all, he changes power relations in favor of the individual: the citizen of the web can have full powers over his own communicative situations.

Conclusions

Society is a system of relationships which develops from, and is built on the natural sphere. Web-life is a system of relationships which develops from, and is built on the social sphere. Man now is not the citizen of two worlds but three: he is the inhabitant of nature, society and web-life.

References

1. Castells, M. The Rise of The Network Society, 2nd ed..; Blackwell: Oxford, England, 2000.
2. Wellman, B.; Haythornthweait, C. eds., The Internet in Everyday Life, Blackwell: Oxford, England, 2002.
3. Fuchs, C. Internet and society. Social theory in the information age, Routledge: London, New York, England, USA, 2008.