My goal in this talk is to further develop the informational conception of logic proposed in [1] by motivating and exploring a methodology for logical practices (using, developing and thinking about logic) that is inspired by the methodology from the philosophy of information, with particular emphasis on its constructionist metaphilosophy [2]. Against this background, I’m interested in the following phenomenon: If a formalisation-process leads to the refinement of one or more concepts we are interested in (either because we are explicitly formalising them, or because we use them to talk about the concepts we are actually formalising), this often leads to a “splitting of notions”. In that case, the uncareful use of the original notions in combination with their refinements often leads to fallacies of equivocation. As suggested in [3], the development of a design-perspective on logic is meant to show that this phenomenon is a reason to abandon the original concepts, and not a reason to cast doubt on the proposed refinement. As a corollary, constructionism is logic contributes to the motivation of a pluralist perspective on logical practices.

The proposed view has affinities with several contemporary and historical perspectives on logic.

1. The emphasis on design is akin to Carnap’s own “logic first” approach, which he contrasted with a “philosophy first” approach to logical theorising, as well as to his views about explic­ation and conceptual engineering [4].
2. The proposed view also resembles the suggestion that our logical practice of formulating a logic should be seen as an entirely standard form of theory-building about a given subject- matter (Logic), rather than as the manipulation of Logic itself [5].
3. The application of insights from the method of abstraction (the methodological recommendation and formal tool to make explicit the interface we use to access the system we study) to the use and development of logic is entirely in line with the logic-as-model view proposed by Shapiro and Cook, and especially with its emphasis on the need to negotiate tradeoffs [6].

Even though the main lines of my proposal can be described in terms of the above views, I will develop it from first principles and focus explicitly on poietic aspects of actual logical practices.

The basic tenet of constructionism as an epistemological thesis is that we can only know what we make. Our only knowledge is a maker’s knowledge; a knowledge of the artefacts we built and thus can examine from within (white box) rather than a user’s knowledge we acquire by observing what is given from without (black box). As Floridi puts it: “Knowledge is not about getting the message from the world; it is first and foremost about negotiating the right sort of communication with it. (…) [C]onstructionism is neither realism nor constructivism, because knowledge neither describes nor prescribes how the world is but inscribes it with semantic artefacts.” [2]. As a methodological recommendation, constructionism is less radical, and only calls for the complementation of conceptual analysis with conceptual engineering. This is the sense in which I’ll employ the term.

When treated as a core ingredient of the philosophy of information, constructionism works hand in hand with the method of abstraction [7]. Whereas constructionism emphasises the need to engineer our access to the world, the method of abstraction provides the concepts that allow us to think about different ways of accessing the world, but also draws attention to the fact that since we can only know our models of the world, we cannot directly compare a model with the world (our only knowledge is by proxy), but only compare different models. This does not only imply that we can only compare levels of abstraction, but also that there is no most general, maximally precise or otherwise epistemically or ontologically fundamental level of abstraction that could play the role of final arbiter (for all means and purposes a direct access).

As I shall argue, we can think about logics as semantic artefacts that allow us to access the world for descriptive as well as for deductive or inferential purposes. This is already a pluralist assumption, for if a logic acts as an interface or a communication-channel, we have no reason to assume that there is a single best all-purpose logic. Indeed, pluralism about levels of abstraction can naturally be associated with two important theoretical virtues of logical pluralism, namely:

1. The freedom to make certain distinctions and/or fudge some other distinctions, and
2. The freedom to outlaw certain expressions.

One of the most visible tasks of the development of a formal logic is the design of a formal language. Since such formal languages are almost by definition artificial languages, the description of the rules that govern that language (formation-rules, truth-conditions, formal inference-patters) is much closer to conceptual engineering than it is to conceptual analysis. Narrowly conceived, language design is an uncontroversial example of process that has to result in an artefact that has to meet certain specifications (a perspicuous notation system or well-behaved language), but what would it mean to consider logical theorising as a whole as a design task? Highly simplified, such a view on logic would mark clear departure from traditional logical analysis, for where successful logical analysis results in a formal account that agrees with the data (something that is given), successful logical construction results in a formal account that meets a set of self-imposed specifications, which includes but is not limited to agreement with the data.

An understanding of logical theorising as a whole in terms of meeting certain specifications gives a more radical pragmatic slant to the question of logic choice. It’s the pragmatics behind what Shapiro calls the negotiation of tradeoffs within his logic-as-model perspective, or what I call the balancing the logical virtues of deductive strength and discriminatory power (the ability to tell formulae apart).

Putting this on the table raises the further question of what a specification for a problem in logical theorising might look like. If we understand a specification as a criterion for correctness and malfunction relative to a given level of abstraction [8], it is clear that in such a context success does not merely depend on general theoretical virtues, but also on context and/or application specific norms. By further developing this suggestion, we should arrive at an account of “logic-specification” that guides our design decisions in the sense that it tells us how to deal with tradeoffs between different desirable formal features. As a corollary, it also further embeds a logical pluralism within the methodology of the philosophy of information, since it is consistent with the view that some logics are more general than others, but also recognises that wider applicability always comes at a cost.

References and Notes

1. Allo and E. Mares, "Informational Semantics as a Third Alternative?", Erkenntnis, 77, no. 2, p. . 167-185, 2012.
2. Floridi, "A defence of constructionism: philosophy as conceptual engineering", Metaphilosophy, 42, no. 3, p. . 282-304, 2011.
3. Allo, "Synonymy and intra-theoretical pluralism", Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 93, no. 1, p. . 77-91, 2015.
4. Carus, Carnap and Twentieth-Century Thought, no. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
5. Priest, Doubt Truth to be a Liar, no. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
6. Shapiro, Varieties of logic, no. Corby: Oxford University Press, 2014.
7. Floridi, "The Method of Levels of Abstraction", Minds and Machines, 18, no. 3, p. 303-329, 2008.
8. Turner, "Specification", Minds and Machines, 21, no. 2, p. 135-152, 2011.

Introduction

Based on Marx’s pyramid of capitalist system, this article outlines some of the contemporary approaches of the digital activism and elaborates a critique of these approaches. Marx and Engels (1970) state that “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas” (1970: 58). If we apply this to the ongoing debates about the development of the internet and internet use, we are facing the situation of the ruling classes (those who have access to the Internet) that decide over the working classes (those many who do not have access to the Internet and therefore do not have the means to impose their ideas/ willing). According to the statistics (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm, 2014) right now the people from richer countries are the ones that are able to participate in digital activism, as Mary Joyce also states: ”people in richer countries are usually more able to participate in digital activism because of the cost and quality of Internet connections available to them” (2010: 3). The present research aims to answer to the following questions: Can we talk about online social classes today? What social classes engage in the online protests? The study provides a critique analysis of the digital activism and, starting from Marx’s theory of social class, introduces the idea of online social class and analyses the characteristics of each online social class on the basis of their participation to online protests. According to Denning (2001: 241), activism is “the use of the Internet in support of an agenda or cause”. This includes online actions like setting up websites, surfing the web for information, posting materials on a website, transmitting electronic publications and letters through email, and using the Internet to discuss issues, form coalitions, and coordinate activities. This research considers digital activism as the use of the Internet or any other Internet- based application in supporting of a political or social cause. Thereby, the activism through Internet include the searching for information, expressing of own opinions on certain social problems, and the use of applications based on Internet to mobilize people to participate in a “real”, physical manifestation. The success an online protest is based on five modes of Internet use: a) collection; b) publication; c) dialogue; d) coordination of action, and e) direct lobbying of decision makers (Denning, 2001: 243). The online social classes are analyzed according to people’s use of specific websites and to their engagement in online protests. For this purpose we analysed people’s online engagement on Facebook on four different protest occasions: the Egyptian protests that took place in Tahrir square in Cairo, the protests that took place in Taksim square in Istanbul, the Indignants movement that took place in different countries, and the Indignants movement that led to Occupy Wall Street movement.

Methods

Employing a large survey and a qualitative study of a purposively sampled community of citizens and internet users, this project wishes to explore how do social classes’ characteristics translate into specific uses of the web and of engaging with online protests. Furthermore, I aim to provide a comprehensive content analysis of people’s engagement in 4 protests on Facebook juxtaposed with a user experience study.

Acknowledgments

This paper is supported by the Sectorial Operational Programme Human Resources Development (SOP HRD), financed from the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government under the contract number SOPHRD/159/1.5/S/136077.

References and Notes

Albrechtslund, A. (2008). Online Social Networking as Participatory Surveillance. 13(3). pp. n.d. Retrieved from http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/viewArticle/2142/1949.

Atton, C. (2002). Alternative media. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage Publications.

Barzilai-Nahon, K. (2008). “Toward a Theory of Network Gatekeeping: A Framework for Exploring Information Control”. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59 (9): 1493–512.

Bohman,J. (2004). “Expanding dialogue: The Internet, the public sphere and prospects for transnational democracy”. The Sociological Review. 52. 131-155.

Bruns, & Burgess (2012). Notes Towards the Scientific Study of Public Communication on Twitter. In Tokar, A., Beurskens, M., Keuneke, S., Mahrt, M., Peters, I., Puschmann, C., van Treeck, T., & Weller, K. (Eds.). (2012). Science and the Internet (pp. 159-169). Düsseldorf: Düsseldorf University Press.

Brodock, K. (2010). Economic and Social Factors: the Digital (activism) Divide. In Joyce, M. (ed). Digital Activism Decoded: the New Mechanics of Change. New York: International Debate Education Association, pp. 71-85.

Bennett, W., Wells, C., & Freelon, D. (2011). Communicating Civic Engagement: Contrasting Models of Citizenship in the Youth Web Sphere. Journal of Communication 61, pp. 835–856.

Boyd, D. & Ellison N. (2007). Social network sites: Definition, history, and scholarship. In Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1), article 11.

Dahlgren, P. (2005). “The Internet, Public Spheres, and Political Communication: Dispersion and Deliberation”. Political Communication. 22. 147-162.

Dallas Lawrence (7/15/2010). How Political Activism Are Making The Most Of Social Media. Forbes. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/15/social-media-social-activism-facebook-twitter-leadership-citizenship-burson.html

Denning, D. (2000). Activism, hacktivism, and cyberterrorism: The Internet as a tool for influencing foreign policy. The Computer Security Journal, XVI (Summer), pp. 15–35.

Denning, D. (2001). Activism, Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism: the internet as a tool for influencing foreign policy. In Arquilla, J., & Ronfeldt, D. RAND, pp. 239, 288.

Edwards, F., Howard, P., & Joyce, M. (2013). Digital Activism & Non - Violent Conflict. Retrieved from: digital-activism.org/download/1270

Ferdinand, P. (ed.) (2000). The Internet, Democracy and Democratization. London: Frank Cass Publishers.

Fisher, E. (2015) Class struggles in the digital frontier: audience labour theory and social media users. Information, Communication & Society. DOI: 10.1080/1369118X.2015.1018300

Fuchs, C. (2006). The Self-Organization of Cyberprotest. K. Morgan, Konrad, C. Brebbia & J. Spector (Eds.), The Internet Society II. Advances in Education, Comerce & Governance. Southampton/Boston: WIT Press. pp. 275-295.

Carlos and J. Michael Spector (2006). The Internet Society II: Advances in Education, Commerce & Governance. Southampton, Boston, WIT Press: 275-295.

Gibson, W. (1984). Neuromancer, New York: Ace Science Fiction Books.

Hargittai, E., & Hinnant, A. (2008). Digital inequality: Differences in young adults’ use of the Internet. In Communication Research, 35(5), 602–621. doi:10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01588.x

Internet World Stats (2014). Facebook. Retrieved from: www.internetworldstats.com/facebook.htm

Jiang, B. & Ormeling, F. (1999). Mapping cyberspace: Visualising, anañysing and exploring virtual worlds. London: Center for Advanced Spatial Anañysis.

Joyce, M. (2010). Digital Activism Decoded: the New Mechanics of Change, New York: International Debate Education Association.

Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1970). The German Ideology. London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Meghan, P. (July, 2014). A Brief History of Online Activism. Retrieved from: http://mashable.com/2011/08/15/online-activism/

Papacharissi, Z. & Gibson, P. L. (2011). Fifteen Minutes of Privacy: Privacy, Sociality and Publicity on Social Network Sites. In S. Trepte and L. Reinecke (eds.), Privacy Online: Perspectives on Privacy and Self- Disclosure in the Social Web. London, New York: Springer.

Poster, M. (1997), “Cyberdemocracy: The Internet and the Public Sphere” in Holmes, D. (ed.), Cyberdemocracy, London, Sage Publications.© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI and ISIS. This abstract is distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license.

1. Introduction

This paper is based on very practical concerns and observations about the Open Educational Resource (OER) movement. While it concerns educational practice, the paper starts with a focus on the rhetoric and stated ideals of the OER movement, exploring the relationship between open education and neoliberalism as an attempt to understand the apparent contradictions within the movement. The paper then looks at OER in distance education as an attempt to understand our own approach to Open Educational Practice (OEP). Drawing on older open education narratives it explores the role of openness in bringing new voices into education through partnerships, and how OEP foster opportunities for groups of learners distanced from education. The paper concludes by acknowledging the deliberate partiality of this reading, and with some questions we are starting to explore.

2. Three Readings of Open Education and Neoliberalism

We can teases out two distinct discourses within OER, open education as spaces of resistance to neoliberalism and the marketisation of education, and more recently open education as co-opted [1] by neoliberalism. This section explores these and suggests a third, OER as a product of neoliberalism.

2.1 Spaces of Resistance

Discourses on OER emphasise its potential to undermine the commodification of education, for example challenging commercial publishers in the United States (US)and through textbooks. The OER movement arose from and draws many of its advocates from jurisdictions (like the US) where access to post compulsory education is costly and/or generally seen as a private good. Likewise the development of the OER movement in England has tracked increasing fees for Higher Education (HE) and shifting political narratives, from education as a public good, to HE providers have become commercial enterprises, market orientated with paying customers [2]. The inference is the OER movement is a potential space of resistance. However, this potential is unrealised, with content generally created and consumed by the educational haves [3]. Their is a great deal of ennui in the movement about the socio-economic profile of consumers, but little insight into the source of these contradictions.

2.2 The Co-option of Openness

Perhaps these contradictions arose because the liberal ideals of the open education movement have been co-opted. Weller's argument that the OER movement is in danger of losing itself as big business looks to co-opt the language of open is possibly best illustrated by the heat and light surrounding the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) movement, where commercial and political interests motivated by the large numbers seems to push aside OER ideals. Certainly capital has crashed in, MOOC discourses tend to be dominated by echoes of Schumpeter's “Creative Destruction”[4], and the oft repeated the “Avalanche is Coming” [5]. However, is this any different from the language employed by OER advocates, which also echo Schumpeter. Instead, lets look at the co-option of the word open, even here the case is not clear. Open is part and parcel of neoliberalism, and not just open innovation that is part of the creative destruction [6], but the broader sense of what open is and does in the world. Opening up markets is the first part of the economic shock tactics of neoliberalism [7].

2.3 Open Education and Neoliberalism

The early optimism of open education movements often focused on autonomous self directed learners, on creating independent learners who could pick and choose from a wide range of educational materials constructing their own curriculum. However, it is in no way clear how the connectivist pedagogy that underlines the early OER flowing into MOOC (cMOOC) developments are inclusive. The self created and endorsed by self regulated learning is very particular, and sits neatly with the autonomous individual of neoliberalism [8]. The idea of the learner as empowered and given agency through openness and the freedom to taking personal responsibility fails to account for this social psychology approach to learning works “in the world”, in particular in relation to the politics of inequality [8]. The reality is the social and structural inequalities within our society are such that the ideal of the autonomous self directed learner is something that is largely the property of those who have already been through “the system”. Creating an approach to openness that is built on these assumptions may end up reproducing those iniquities rather than challenging them.

3. Educational Practice in Open Education

It might seem unfair to suggest a reading of the OER movement with its focus on the individual and freedoms is akin to many other “counter culture” movements [9][10] and a product of capitals search for new market. However, the pedagogic challenge noted above suggests OER is deeply entwinned with neoliberal forces in ways that simple stories about spaces of resistance or co-option do not account for. The purpose in highlighting inherent contradictions within OER is not to undermine the idea of open and free education, but to surface questions over its form and function.

3.1 Distance Education to Online Education

Their is a sense that we tend to make openness in our own image(s) [11]. Online education is a key influence on the OER movement [12], in the UK the OER movement has developed from the online education movement and the sharing of learning objects amongst learning technologists, it tends to focuses on widening access (massification) not widening participation (WP, the socio-economic base of those accessing education). Setting aside the clear parallels with the recent growth of Higher Education under neoliberalism, which has tended to focus on widening access and the skills for economic participation, neglecting WP [13]. While in distance education the creation and distribution of standardised content, was later added to by the recognition that without support those distanced from education would still be excluded [14]. When online education and then OER cleaved from Distance Education, it drew on the creation and sharing of content, it even drew on the sense of reaching learners. However, it seems to have neglected a fundamental tenant, the ideas around supporting uncertain learners.

3.2 Emerging Approaches to OEP

Our own work draws on the tradition of equity and inclusion from distance learning in part because we arrived in the OER movement by accident. Over the years the OU in Scotland has developed a particular approach to working in partnership with organisations who work with marginalised groups, these partners are “trusted sources” of support, “safe places” [15]. Our work with OER emerged out of those educational practices, we were less concerned with how to enable openness and far more concerned with what openness might enable. What it enabled was work outside the constraints of the formal curriculum, joining up inbetween spaces often crucial to educational transitions [15]. It also enabled us to open up content production, bringing new voices into OER. The approach was participatory co-designing learning journeys with partners educators and learners alike. For example, our work with social housing tenants was energy saving advice written for those in fuel poverty produced by those experiencing fuel poverty [16]. Likewise, recent work with young carers about transitions has been about working with caring charities and young carers to co-design learning journeys that were meaningful to them [3]. This, and other emerging work with Trade Unions and Third Sector organisations supporting those in poverty, has far more in common with older traditions of communities and groups working together to develop educational opportunities [17].

4. Conclusions

This paper is partly an attempt to explain the genealogy of our OEP, an attempt to attempt to understand our general uneasiness with the OER movement, and a wish to share some of the questions we have. We arrived at openness indirectly through educational practices concerned with opening up access to education more generally. In trying to understand why we have developed different approaches to OEP we have presented a deliberately partial reading of OER discourses. In exploring our uneasiness and its roots, what is obscured are the reasons these partners are seeking us out, and our own questions.

Partly we are sought because of trust and shared values [15], but also relates to cost effectiveness and efficiencies. Third sector organisations and their clients are often at the sharp end of austerity policies and retreat of the state. First through delivering services for the state as it retreats, then through supporting client groups experiencing austerity. Certainly we have lessons to learn, and it may be that we can learn from what is happening on the margins of neoliberalism as many of the patterns we now observe in “the North” like zero hour contacts and gated communities are innovations from the “Global South” [18]. While we see examples of OER and OEP that can be read as neocolonialist [7][19]. We also see the emergence of approaches to openness which start to question the role of the academy in society, for example action research approaches to practical problems like agricultural productivity which break down the barriers between academics and society [20], where again it is about what openness enables. We sense a common purpose, but also common questions, we end by asking whether we are in danger of becoming complicit in the creation of the neoliberal state through propping it up, and if so, how to reshape the path of openness.

References

1. Weller, M. The Battle for Open: How openness won and why it doesn't feel like victory, Ubiquity Press: London, 2014.
2. Longstaff E. The prehistory of MOOCs: Inclusive and exclusive access in the cyclical evolution of higher education. Journal of Organisational Transformation & Social Change, 2014, 11(3), 164-84.
3. Cannell P.; Macintyre R. Towards Open Educational Practice. In: EADTU Annual Conference: New Technologies and the future of Teaching and Learning, 23-24th of October 2014, Krakow, Poland.
4. Joseph Schumpeter- Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Schumpeter, 2015
5. Barber, M.; Donnelly, K.; Rizvi, S. An Avalanche is Coming, Institute for Public Policy Research: London, 2013.
6. Ettlinger N. Openness? New Left Review, 2014, 89, 89-102
7. Harvey D. Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development, Verso: London, 2006
8. Vassallo S. Critical pedagogy and neoliberalism: Concerns with teaching self-regulated learning. Studies in Philosophy & Education 2013, 32(6), 563-80
9. Heath J. Potter A. Nation of Rebels: Why Counter Culture Became Consumer Culture, Harper Business: New York, 2004
10. Frank T. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture and the Rise of Hip Consumerism, University of Chicago Press: Chicago 1998
11. Macintyre, R. Open Educational Partnerships and Collective Learning. Journal of Interactive Media in Education 2013, 3, 20
12. Latchem C. Musing on the memes of open and distance education. Distance Education, 2014, 35(3), 400-9.
13. Smith K.M. Jeffery D.I. Critical pedagogies in the neoliberal university: What happens when they go digital? Canadian Geographer, 2013, 57(3), 372-80.
14. Som N. Looking back, looking forward: the invention and reinvention of distance education. Distance Education, 2014, 35(3), 263-270
15. Field J. Gallacher J. Ingram R. Researching Transitions in Lifelong Learning, Routledge: London, 2009
16. Macintyre R. Open Design and Social Inclusion in Practice. In Designing Learning Landscapes: Mobile, Open, Inclusive, 2014 30^th of May, Goldsmiths University of London
17. Rose J. The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, Yale University Press: London, 2002
18. Comaroff J.; Comaroff J.Theory from the South: Or How Euro-America is Evolving Toward Africa. Paradigm Publishers: London 2012
19. Rhoads R.A.; Berdan , J.; Toven-Lindsey B. The open courseware movement in higher education: Unmasking power and raising questions about the movement's democratic potential. Educational Theory, 2013, 63(1), 87-109.
20. Kaneene J.B.; Ssajjakambwe P.; Kisaka S.; Miller R.; Kabasa J.D. Creating open education resources for teaching and community development through action research: An overview of the makerere AgShare project. Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks 2013 17(2), 31-42.

The standard model of evolution assumes a fixed fitness landscape. Usually there is co-evolution, though: besides being influenced by its environment, an agent also shapes its environment (as described by niche construction (Laland, Odling-Smee, & Feldman, 2001)). View this as a swamp-like fitness landscape that changes as an agent moves through it and acts in it.

This interplay is described on different similar aspects: between 'natural and cultural', 'social and infrastructure', 'function and structure', 'society and technology', 'decisions and acts', 'theory and practice' and 'micro and macro'. This mechanism can be used to explain certain dynamics. In the next paragraphs I will do so for technology and democracy. In general, out of the interactions of local elements, there is a bigger structure that emerges. This structure could then impose itself onto the agents, so that a status quo is reached: agents are influenced by the structure, while they don't have any more influence in return (Stirner, 1995, Stewart, 2014).

Technology is in interaction with a certain kind of society and ideas. Technology strengthens a certain type of society, while it is also out of current ideas that a technology is created. Technology creates the circumstances, the environment, in which one can act. We can find support in technology to liberate ourselves. But technology can never liberate in itself, because you can only liberate yourself. Technology can't save us, because then we aren't the drivers, the players, of our own future. Technology can reinforce certain liberating tendencies, but if these tendencies aren't present, even the most liberating technology will evolve to serve the current system.

Today’s democracy creates a sharp separation between decision making and acting. Some politicians make the decisions, which other people put into practice. This makes it possible to avoid responsibility, and creates alienation. Dreams can't evolve into acts.

Distributed governance is a step in the right direction. But often there is the assumption that we should make a global decision, and then all act by that decision, for example in (Banathy, 2000). Although these decisions and acts have come about in a distributed way, there is still a separation between them. A global decision is made out of local decisions, which lead to local acts bringing forth a global act. Another practice is where local decisions lead to local acts, out of which a global behavior, a global direction, emerges.

A solution to this structure that imposes itself could be a more hybrid structure, one that is constantly evolving, a variation and selection of different ways of organizing (Veitas & Weinbaum, 2014). There is not one utility measure that imposes a hierarchical ordering (Roughgarden, 2013). Instead of trying to reach a global, united decision or view, there would be local groups or individuals who develop themselves and work together to do so. It would be diverse and even contradictory. This conflict will boost a dynamic play.

Only a constant opposition can work, though, against the natural tendency of a system for unification, for getting stuck in a status quo. This mechanism is analogous to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that without selection, a system will become more and more disordered. Without opposition, a system will impose itself and become rigid. But this doesn't mean that a complex or anti-authoritarian society is impossible.

The idea is to create the environment that helps people to develop and enables them. But they are two different perspectives to do this (Busseniers, 2014): to start from yourself, constructing the world you would like to live in, or to start from the other, constructing a world where an assumed better behavior is more easily achieved. This last perspective is that of libertarian paternalism (Heylighen, 2009).

These considerations are important to take into account when thinking about the global brain. Will the global brain be this integrating structure, a stable attractor state, impossible to resist since it is omnipotent and omnipresent (Heylighen, 2014)? Or will it be a constantly evolving structure that enables us to build the world we want? Will it alienate our decisions from our acts? People could get stuck in a virtual world where they can raise all kinds of opinions, but without these being connected to their acts and everyday lives. But the internet could also enable people to put their ideas into practice, by providing tools, resources and people. Consider for example the scientific process. Right now, a researcher develops a plan for an experiment, performs an experiment and writes down the results in an article, and only then his ideas are peer-reviewed. At that stage, they might find out that actually there are some problems with the experimental setup. A more continuous peer-review could be interesting, where every step gets peer-reviewed. The global brain could enable this.

References

1. Banathy, B. H. (2000). Guided evolution of society: A systems view. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers New York.
2. Busseniers E. (2014): Is external control important for internal control? (GBI Working paper)
3. Heylighen, F. (2009). Stimuleren van geluk en sociale vooruitgang: een libertair paternalistische benadering. Ethiek en Maatschappij, 12(1), 147–167.
4. Heylighen, F. (2014). Return to Eden? Promises and Perils on the Road to a Global Superintelligence. The End of the Beginning: Life, Society and Economy on the Brink of the Singularity.
5. Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J., & Feldman, M. W. (2001). Cultural niche construction and human evolution. Journal of Evolutionary Biology, 14(1), 22–33. doi:10.1046/j.1420-9101.2001.00262.x
6. Roughgarden, J. (2013). Evolution’s rainbow: Diversity, gender, and sexuality in nature and people. Univ of California Press.
7. Stewart, J. E. (2014). The direction of evolution: The rise of cooperative organization. Biosystems, 123, 27–36. doi:10.1016/j.biosystems.2014.05.006
8. Stirner, M. (1995). Stirner: The Ego and Its Own. Cambridge University Press.
9. Veitas, V., & Weinbaum, D. (2014). A World of Views: A World of Interacting Post-human Intelligences. arXiv preprint arXiv:1410.6915.

Introduction

Any living organism is a great chorus of agreed oscillatory processes, which are connected with their genetic inheritance along chains of generations. Since ancient times, chronomedicine believes that all diseases are the result of disturbances in the ordered set of oscillatory processes. From a formal point of view, a living organism is an oscillating system with a large number of degrees of freedom. Resonances in such a system can serve as mechanisms for harmonization and ordering of its set of oscillatory processes. The possibility of resonance approvals has long attracted the attention of many researchers. The presentation represents the author’s conception of resonant genomes.

Methods of modeling

All natural objects - both living and others - have resonant properties. Whether there is a specifity of biological resonant properties, which are inherited genetically? The presentation shows the author’s model approach, the results of which give evidences in favor of the specificity of the biological system of inherited resonances. This model approach is based on a relatively narrow class of systems of resonances, which is associated with the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of (2ⁿ*2ⁿ)-matrices of tensor families based on the tensor product of (2*2)-matrices.

Matrices are endowed with a remarkable property of displaying resonances. Physical phenomenon of resonances is familiar to everyone. The passage of the signal "s" through the acoustic system A, which is represented by the matrix A, is modeled by the expression y = A * s. If the input signal "s" is a resonant tone, then the output signal "y" repeats it up to a scale factor y = λ*s. In the matrix the quantity of resonant tones corresponds to its size and the quantity of freedom degrees of the system, which it represents. In vibration theory these resonant tones are called eigenvectors of the matrix, and the scale factors λ_i are called its eigenvalues, a set of which is a spectrum of the system A (or the matrix A). Frequencies ω_i = λ_i^0.5 are called the natural frequencies of the system, and the corresponding eigenvectors are called its own forms of oscillations. These free undamped oscillations occur in the system in the absence of friction forces in it. Free oscillations of the system determine its behavior in many other conditions.

This report examines the spectra of (2ⁿ*2ⁿ)-matrices, which are generated by tensor products of the original (2*2) matrices and which are used to model some genetic phenomena and structures. The tensor product of matrices has long been used in mathematics, computer science, management theory, coding theory, physics, etc. The tensor product of matrices, which correspond to initial oscillatory systems, allows you to jump to matrices of systems of the increased quantity of freedom degrees.

Results and Discussion

Tensor products of matrices have the important property of "inheritance" of eigenvalues of original matrices: if original matrices V and W have their eigenvalues λ_i and μ_j respectively, then all the eigenvalues of their tensor product are equal to λ_i*μ_j. Features of such inheritance of eigenvalues (λ_i, μ_j, ...) of original matrices in cases of tensor multiplication of the matrices can be conveniently represented in the form of "tables of inheritance of eigenvalues of the matrices". The author reveals that these mathematical "tables of inheritance" coincide structurally with phenomenological Punnet squares, which are widely used in the field of genetics from 1906 year to describe poly-hybrid crosses of organisms in accordance with Mendel's laws. But in the case of Punnet squares, alleles of genes are used, not the eigenvalues of matrices. This coincidence generates the following idea:

• Alleles of genes and their combinations can be interpreted as the eigenvalues of (2ⁿ*2ⁿ)-matrices from the tensor families of matrices of oscillatory systems. This model approach focuses on the possible importance for genetic systems a special class of mutually related resonances from tensor families of matrices, which play the role of biological "matrix archetypes."

Science has led to a new understanding of life itself: “Life is a partnership between genes and mathematics” [1]. But what kind of mathematics can be a partner for the genetic coding system? The author shows some additional evidences that mathematics of eigenvalues and eigenvectors of matrices from the tensor families of matrices (that is mathematics of special systems of resonances) is also useful to model phenomenological structures of alphabets of DNA: 4 nitrogenous bases (adenin A, cytosine C, guanine G, thymine T); 16 duplets, 64 triplets. For example, this model approach reveals hidden connections of the genetic alphabets with Walsh functions and Hadamard matrices, which are widely used in information technologies of noise-immune coding. Resonances can be carriers of information. Our set of such results gives evidences in favor of the following:

• Genetic alphabets are systems of resonances; respectively, the genetic code is the code of systems of resonances; genetic texts on the basis of these alphabets are texts on a language of resonances.

From a formal point of view, our vocal apparatus is an oscillatory system with many freedom degrees. In his oral speech and singing, a person utilizes his innate ability to use acoustic resonances, reproduce sounds of speech and music with specific spectral composition, and use the resonances as carriers of information. According to the classics of structural linguistics (R. Jakobson et al.), our linguistic language did not come out of nowhere, but it is an extension and superstructure of the genetic language, which is the oldest among all languages. In light of this idea, our discovery of the deep connection of genetic structures with mathematical structures of resonances looks natural. The theory of resonant genomes provides also models of psychophysical law of Weber-Fechner and phyllotaxis laws of morphogenesis in terms of the eigenvalues of matrices of oscillatory systems. These researches about matrix genetics of inherited systems of biological resonances are a continuation of our previous works in the field of matrix genetics [2-4].

Taking into account the musical aspect of our researches, a new slogan can be proposed: a living body is a musical instrument (a synthesizer with an abundance of rearrangements resonant modes). Music is a game in systems of acoustic resonances, to which a person is very predisposed, though he does not have a specialized body of music perception, perceiving music by means of the whole being. During tens of thousands of years, he creates musical instruments, adjusting them to specific systems of resonances, which lead to appearance of his emotions, formication and tears. Repeating genetic processes of agreed complications of living bodies, people over the centuries have learned to combine individual instruments and singers into the orchestras and choirs as oscillatory systems with increased number of freedom degrees. The study of the evolution of musical culture during different historical ages may be important, including, for the birth of heuristic associations to develop theories and methods of research in genetics and bioinformatics.

Conclusions

The conception of resonant genomes links music and genetic systems. It is based on the theory of resonances of vibrational systems with many freedom degrees. It's able to contribute to the development of musical culture and its tools, and provide some new approaches to music therapy, popular around the world.

Oscillatory processes not only accompany the functioning of the organism, being physiologically necessary, but they are also widely used in physical therapy and medical diagnostics. Vibrations from outside world are the cause of the occupational disease - vibration disease. It is obvious that increased knowledge in the field of genetic science, based on the biological application of methods of mathematical and engineering informatics, could have a positive impact on the development of new methods and means to address many of problems of modern society.

References

1. Stewart I. Life's other secret: The new mathematics of the living world. New-York: Penguin, 1999.
2. Petoukhov S.V. Matrix genetics, algebras of the genetic code, noise-immunity. RCD: Moscow, Russia, 2008, 316 p. (in Russian, http://petoukhov.com/)
3. Petoukhov S.V., He M. Symmetrical Analysis Techniques for Genetic Systems and Bioinformatics: Advanced Patterns and Applications. IGI Global: Hershey, USA 2010, 271 p.
4. Darvas G., Koblyakov A., Petoukhov S., Stepanyan I. Symmetries in molecular-genetic systems and musical harmony. Symmetry: Culture and Science, 2012, vol. 23, № 3-4, p. 343-375.

The purpose of any social discipline is to understand the society through their theoretical perspectives. Human communication as a social science is also without exception, its purpose is to explain the society by means of inspecting the social information as well as the contents and extensions during the operation of social information system. Social together with its system are complex and comprehensive by nature, which determines human communication existing itself as a comprehensive science with multiple theories, aspects and perspectives. It is reasonable to study with the help of related theories of other subjects in facing concrete research issues and when the existing theories lack enough power to give an explanation.

Interpersonal human communication is an important part in human life, the human communication study about is rather few, however. This paper is about to solve this problem, for current human communication cannot explain the barriers occurred in the interpersonal human communication. To deal with such issue that often happens in social life, the author is appeal to information system theories to explain that the trajectory of information changes in the course of human communication could cause barriers.

Origin of the issue: difficulty in explaining life cases

The author has found a worthy pondering case in daily life. A friend of mine just describes the rules and her feelings after playing it when she is trying to introduce a game for me, though her description is quite vivid, I’m even no fond of it and have no desire to know it more. Then she tries again to introduce its content, which still cannot attract me to understand its essence. Finally I even have a feeling of contradicting when she repeats it a third time.

Human communication possesses reverent explanations upon communicating issues. Human communication has a necessary premise which refers to the mutual meaning space possessed by both disseminator and recipient. Spreading and communicating is such a process that disseminator and recipient are signifying and interpreting the semantic information with symbols. In the process of symbolization, the disseminator transforms his expressions into languages, words and behaviors, etc.; and the recipient collects them into his information processing system, then interprets them with symbols by recognizing, understanding, interpreting and reflecting, etc. Signifying or interpreting these information in process of spreading with symbols must have a necessary condition that both the two sides should share a mutual meaning space, which means both of them must gain a shared understanding about senses of those symbols.

Whether the concept “common meaning space” could solve the issue referred at the beginning of the text? What can be confirmed is that the example at the beginning conforms to all hypothesis of this theory: my friend and I compose the subject and object in the process of spreading and what we are communicating with each other is the rule of the game, she transforms me her senses by means of language and body, and I indeed hear my friend’s voice and the content she tries to tell me no matter how the result is, what’s more important, my friends and I share similar surroundings and a common language system, therefore “common meaning space” does exist between us. According to the logic of this theory, I have interpreted them when receiving the symbols of my friend, so the spreading effect of understanding the game rule is achieved. However, it is strangely that even though mutual meaning space exists between my friend and I, why impassable interaction still happens?

Rationality of explaining human communication barriers with information system theory

Several premises need to be confirmed before solving the above question: Firstly, it is no doubt that human communication is such an activity which relates to information transfer. Secondly, human communication is a kind of human interaction behavior on the microscopic level; and if being extended a little, it can be regarded as a process of spreading information; seen from a more macro perspective, it is considered as a system in which interaction occurs between information and many elements of the environment. human communication, as a behavior, is an activity that considers man as the main part; as a process, it is the interaction and interrelation of a series of links and elements carried by information from its source to destination; and as a system, it is a complicated “process aggregation”, which refers to the overall changes caused by interaction of various communicating processes. What can be confirmed is that the core of human communication is always the information no matter being explained from any aspects. Human communication, on a more macro level, could exists as a procedural activity as well as a systemic activity, therefore, it is an activity of both procedural and systemic by nature.

On account of the marketing tendency of media operation, main current human communication studies focus on areas of mass media and new media, but few pay their research attention to exploring its information level. These theory studies about human communication that develop roughly around the five modules of mass human communication put forward by Wilbur Schramm, that are control study, medium study, content study, audience study and effect study. Nevertheless, human communication research, especially Chinese human communication theory, is facing the problem of scientize, hence the empirical research of audience and effect studies among the above five aspects becomes the tendency of human communication research in recent years. In addition, lots of social problems caused by emerge of various forms of medias also promote the study of media culture and issues about the ethic. However, human communication studies much more than this, throughout the history, human beings never cease to communicate with each other since their origin, all of which construct the current mankind history. View the world far away, we find that though we are living in an age of fast developing media, except for media, human communication also exists in man, between man and man, man and group, group and group as well as country and country, all of these human communication activities and phenomena which occur among time-space relationship should be included into the area of human communication study. Besides, empirical study, as a method of studying from individual case, still has inevitable abuse. Though this method could explain and resolve concrete issues, yet due to the contingency of individual case as study object, its result would lack universality. For the value of a theory lies in its explanatory power, and the way to get which is to explore the core concept whereby the discipline develops. Obviously, the core of human communication is information whose production and spreading derive from the need of human beings’material production and contact. As an information activity associated with material production, the core of human communication transformation between information, taken in this sense, human communication also exists in, except for mass media, all levels of social life such as man himself, human beings, groups and organizations, therefore it is necessary and worthy trying to discuss issues of human communication from the aspect of information.

Evolution process of information in system

Now that “common meaning space” cannot explain the issue raised at the beginning, we might as well return to the core of human communication, the information, from which we could explore the unfinished and endless knowledge in human communication theories. To be clear that what the disseminator and the recipient actually do in their signifying and symbolizing is to exchange the senses that attach to the symbols. Sense in human communication theory refers to men’s understanding about the natural and social issues, the meaning men give to their objects is just the essence they communicate and exchange by means of symbols. In the theory of information system, exchanging of sense means creation of information, which refers to create a new information by recombining and reconstructing them, the information after recreating is the sense after exchanging. Therefore, it is absolutely possible to understand in virtue of information creation system when analyzing the individual case.

Information creation system is used to create new information by processing the existing ones. Information creation is realized through recombing and reconstructing the information, in this process, the system creatively breaks down and regroups those existing information, and then gives them new choice, matching and constructing. For it concerns graphical analysis, it is necessary to stipulate the case elements ahead: first, what is exchanged or spread in the case is the game rule, it is stipulated as existing information set X; second, signifying and interpreting with symbols are actually the process of creating new information, it involves the information processing steps which possesses two types, that are determinism type and indeterminism type, then the below study needs to discuss the symbolic activities by regarding them as determinism type and indeterminism type respectively. Figure 1 shows the operating model of information system of determinism type:

Figure 1. Operating mode of determinism type. (see PDF version for the image)

In model of determinism type, when game rule X comes into my friend’s information processing system and transforms as languages, what I receive must be the information Y that exists as language information. This kind of processing model is as the saying “You reap what you sow”, which means my friends says out what she wants to say, and I, however, as another information processing system, understand all what she “expresses”. If man is regarded as an information processing facility that operates according to the principles of mechanical determinism type, thus as information recipient in the case, “I” should get all information she conveys as well as resonate with them instead of occurring such phenomenon as “impassable interaction” .

Obviously, it is impossible to do a reasonable explanation if man is regarded as an information processing system that operates followed by determinism type. Before exploring the reason, man’s physiological structure that needed in the process of receiving information should be considered. In physical sense, men have roughly similar physiological structures, and seen from the hardware elements, each human body is composed of elements as skin, blood, muscle and bone. In addition, human body also consists of software elements, which refers to the covert differences such as individual looks and thinking modes caused by different ways of DNA information coding. Next, view from the psychological level, man as an individual with independence sense, his receiving and processing information is carrying under interaction of the existing cognitive structure that formed by removing his thinking mode, past experience and value judgment, in which all elements are operating together. Man belongs to be complicated no matter viewed from physiological or psychological level, therefore, it is far enough to fully understand the complexity of cognitive process if man is just considered as a simple information processing object.

Then, what if man as information processing system operate according to the mode of indeterminism type? As shown in figure 2.

Figure 2. Operating mode of indeterminism type. (see PDF version for the image)

In this information processing system of indeterminism type, seen from the angle of my friend who spreads the game rule, when transmitting information X to “me”, she should firstly collect the game content into her information processing system, which also means filtrating, that is to say, the information she filtrates is considered to be enough to fully describe the game. After that, she should remove her thinking mode, life experience and language performance to process those that filtrated and then transform them into languages to output. All that experience such a series of processing will no more be the original information X, instead, it may be any information set in Y1-----Yn. In other words, the information X in several Y1-----Yn sets is resulted from the output program of various information recombination and reconstruction, it is any possible information produced inevitably during the information processing after distortion, and it is also the created information after the game decomposites, composites, chooses, matches and constructs its rule again. Seen from me as a recipient, what I receive is might any information set in Y1-----Yn set, which will not coincide completely with information set X no matter which of them I receive. Likewise, I also follow the information processing system that operates according to mode of indeterminism type, and the information I receive and output will still gradually distort and change. Hence though I receive a confirmed information in Y1-----Yn set, I can certainly output Z1----Zn information set.

The issue of “obstacle in interaction” just lies here. If the disseminator is considered as information processing system A, the recipient is considered as information processing system B, the result is as following in figure 3.

Figure 3. Diagram of information matching in human communication barriers. (see PDF version for the image)

It can be seen from the figure that the recipient B, as an information processing system, after receiving some information（Yi）in Y1-----Yn set, cures it and then outputs “Z1-----Zn” possible created information, this part of information is neither equal to its original one nor equal to any information in Y1-----Yn set that outputted by the disseminator, here, “impassable interaction” results from the fact that the created information outputted by system of the disseminator mismatches the one that outputted by the system of the recipient.

Discussion about the explanation power of information creation system to human communication issues

Let us return back to discussion about human communication, now that distortion happens inevitably in the process of information transfer, then whether signifying and interpreting with symbols can realize? Signifying and interpreting with symbols share a theory hypothesis, that is between the two human communication sides lying a mutual meaning space, otherwise the interpreting activity will be meaningless. This is equal to the information processing mode of determinism, which interprets human communication content with symbols, naturally hopes that the recipient could understand the meaning carried by the symbol after receiving it, for example, if the disseminator symbolizes the content of “human communication” as X, the effect he wants to achieve is that the recipient could associate “human communication” when he sees the symbol X. Of course this belongs to an ideal state, the fact is, however, if the recipient does not know the relation between X and “human communication”, his understanding would stay just on the letter X; if the recipient knows the relation between X and “human communication” but has little knowledge about “human communication” except for its literal meaning, then he would take for granted that X equals to “human communication”; if luckily enough to meet a recipient who is familiar with the science of human communication, he would enlarge his understanding about X to every schools and areas of human communication, this is just what “common meaning space” is about to express, while this kind of profound understanding is one of those many different versions. Therefore, due to the complexity of human nature and the inner randomness of information processing system, complete signifying and interpreting with symbols belong to a probability event which occurs in an ideal state only.

In our daily life, in turn, there also exist lots of human communication barriers, among which the most typical one is misunderstanding. Just as its name implies that “understanding” refers to some errors or mistakes appear in the interaction between two sides of human communication. What should be clear firstly is that a necessary premise lies in misunderstanding, that is both the two sides sharing a subjective will of understanding each other by means of meaning interaction, which meanwhile is the starting point of human communication. But why the misunderstanding till happens though the activity sets out based on human communication will? In terms of information system, both the two sides of human communication are all systems that process the information according to the mode of indeterminism type, the one who outputs information should transform his viewpoints and attitudes that being expressed into language information and then organize them as language symbols within his expressing ability range, the expression of these languages may vary its senses accompanied the voice, intonation, expression and bodies of the exporter, for instance, stressing any letter in “I love you” would cause different emphasis of its senses; and if it is respectively expressed with mood of declarative, question or exclamatory, the result is also entirely different; when saying out the sentence, man’s corresponding facial expression still produces different understandings about it to the other side; likewise, body changes accompanied also affect understanding of this sentence. What’s more complicated is that the output of a language information set includes elements such as sense, voice, intonation, mood and bodies, as the results of total information transfer, they are formed after a complex permutation and combination which is determined by the usage of various elements in the exporter’s system, the randomness of such information processing determines that the outputted information no longer has its original full meaning it wants to express before, added that the recipient would dislocate the information when he receives it, thus it is natural and inevitable to produce some misunderstandings.

Conclusion: analysis and definition about “common meaning space” in human communication

Having viewed real case of human communication barriers in daily life, the author found the defect and inability of “common meaning space” in explaining human communication issues. After resorting to information system theory, the author then observes human communication activity by regarding it as an information processing system, thus discovers that from its origin to destination, information gradually experiences steps like filtration, matching, recombination, reconstruction and output, during which original information varies inevitably and information that has arrived at destination is no longer the one as its original. Information after varying will experience a new round varying as a new origin, and this new varying would be aggravated by any chance element in information processing system. Thus, as the disseminator and recipient of information processing system, their exporting information sets do not match under the action of contingency and randomness, which causes the human communication barrier that one only hears the voice, but get little meaning.

The mismatching of information sets can also be used to interpret barriers within human communication area. And in human communication, the exchange of meaning is realized through signifying interpreting with symbols. However, due to the structural complexity of man both physically and mentally and the randomness of information system of indeterminism type, information distortion cannot be avoided no matter in the process of signifying the content or interpreting it with symbols, the same symbol would result different understandings on account of different cognitive backgrounds of the readers. Therefore, it is impossible to realize a complete interaction which is just an ideal state.

In man’s daily interpersonal activities, embarrassing human communication like misunderstanding happens often even if the disseminator and recipient are on very intimate terms with each other. If explaining this phenomenon with “common meaning space”, such result would occur that though the two sides share same language systems and similar life experiences which can meet the hypothetical condition of “common meaning space”, it is still impossible to realize an effective human communication. What causes this is not because the two sides have no subjective will to communicate successfully, it is because they all have different viewpoints and attitudes upon things, objects and people due to their distinctive physical and mental structures, life experiences and value judgments that caused by the complexity of their own information system, which results in their viewpoints and attitudes producing no resonance.

In a word, the failure of “common meaning space” results from its regarding the disseminator and recipient as a kind of mechanical and isolated device that outputs and receives information, it neglects the randomness of information processing caused by the individual’s inner mental-physical structure, life experience and thinking mode, and also neglects the fact that the information delivered in interpersonal interaction and human communication is not its original form, but the created one after processing instead. It is just this randomness and complexity determines that man, as an information processing system, follows the operation principles of indeterminism. Therefore, the “common meaning space” in human communication is worthy analyzing and defining. Objectively speaking, what can be confirmed is “common meaning space” does exists, otherwise we are unable to attend normal interpersonal human communication and social life. Nevertheless, man’s inner complexity and randomness of information processing confine that true “meaning space” is impossible to have complete “mutual commonness” of meaning, in general, “meaning space” only appoints within “roughly similar” scope, some are rather different or even run in the opposite directions. In this sense, man’s human communication is quite a rough activity.

References

1&2 Guo Qingguang.The Coursebook of human communication[M]. Beijing:China Renmin UP, 2004:6.

3&4&5 Wu Kun.Theoretical Basis of Complex Information System[M]. Xi’an:Xi’an Jiaotong University Press, 2010:97-99.

6 Wu Kun.Programs about Complexity and Information Science Study[J]. Chinese Journal of System Science, 2005(2):12-15.

7 Wu Kun.About Several Important Basic Theories in Contemporary Science that Influence the Philosophy[J]. Studies in Dialectics of Nature, 2005(07):10-14.

Any explanation of media and democracy is based on a worldview. The premise of this paper is that any worldview can be associated with one of the four broad paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This paper takes the case of media and democracy and discusses it from the four different viewpoints. It emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the phenomenon from their specific paradigmatic viewpoint; and together they provide a much broader, deeper, and balanced understanding of the phenomenon under consideration.

These different perspectives should be regarded as polar ideal types. The work of certain authors helps to define the logically coherent form of a certain polar ideal type. But, the work of many authors who share more than one perspective is located between the poles of the spectrum defined by the polar ideal types. The purpose of this paper is not to put people into boxes. It is rather to recommend that a satisfactory perspective may draw upon several of the ideal types.

Social theory can usefully be conceived in terms of four key paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. The four paradigms are founded upon different assumptions about the nature of social science and the nature of society. Each generates theories, concepts, and analytical tools which are different from those of other paradigms.

In order to understand a new paradigm, theorists should be fully aware of assumptions upon which their own paradigm is based. Moreover, to understand a new paradigm one has to explore it from within, since the concepts in one paradigm cannot easily be interpreted in terms of those of another. No attempt should be made to criticize or evaluate a paradigm from the outside. This is self-defeating since it is based on a separate paradigm. All four paradigms can be easily criticized and ruined in this way.

These four paradigms are of paramount importance to any scientist, because the process of learning about a favored paradigm is also the process of learning what that paradigm is not. The knowledge of paradigms makes scientists aware of the boundaries within which they approach their subject. Each of the four paradigms implies a different way of social theorizing.

Each theory can be related to one of the four broad worldviews. These adhere to different sets of fundamental assumptions about; the nature of science (i.e., the subjective-objective dimension), and the nature of society (i.e., the dimension of regulation-radical change), as in Exhibit 1.

Assumptions related to the nature of science are assumptions with respect to ontology, epistemology, human nature, and methodology.

The assumptions about ontology are assumptions regarding the very essence of the phenomenon under investigation. That is, to what extent the phenomenon is objective and external to the individual or it is subjective and the product of individual’s mind.

The assumptions about epistemology are assumptions about the nature of knowledge - about how one might go about understanding the world, and communicate such knowledge to others. That is, what constitutes knowledge and to what extent it is something which can be acquired or it is something which has to be personally experienced.

The assumptions about human nature are concerned with human nature and, in particular, the relationship between individuals and their environment, which is the object and subject of social sciences. That is, to what extent human beings and their experiences are the products of their environment or human beings are creators of their environment.

The assumptions about methodology are related to the way in which one attempts to investigate and obtain knowledge about the social world. That is, to what extent the methodology treats the social world as being real hard and external to the individual or it is as being of a much softer, personal and more subjective quality. In the former, the focus is on the universal relationship among elements of the phenomenon, whereas in the latter, the focus is on the understanding of the way in which the individual creates, modifies, and interprets the situation which is experienced.

The assumptions related to the nature of society are concerned with the extent of regulation of the society or radical change in the society.

Sociology of regulation provides explanation of society based on the assumption of its unity and cohesiveness. It focuses on the need to understand and explain why society tends to hold together rather than fall apart.

Sociology of radical change provides explanation of society based on the assumption of its deep-seated structural conflict, modes of domination, and structural contradiction. It focuses on the deprivation of human beings, both material and psychic, and it looks towards alternatives rather than the acceptance of status quo.

The subjective-objective dimension and the regulation-radical change dimension together define four paradigms, each of which share common fundamental assumptions about the nature of social science and the nature of society. Each paradigm has a fundamentally unique perspective for the analysis of social phenomena.

The aim of this paper is not so much to create a new piece of puzzle as it is to fit the existing pieces of puzzle together in order to make sense of it. Sections II to V, first, each lays down the foundation by discussing one of the four paradigms. Subsequently, each examines media and democracy from the point of view of the respective paradigm. Section VI concludes the paper.

References

1. Abramson, Jeffrey B., Arterton, F. Christopher, and Orren, Gary R., 1998, The Electronic Commonwealth: The Impact of New Media Technologies on Democratic Politics, New York, New York: Basic Books.
2. Altheide, David L., 1974, Creating Reality: How TV News Distorts Events, Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications.
3. Ardalan, Kavous, 2008, On the Role of Paradigms in Finance, Aldershot, Hampshire, U.K.: Ashgate Publishing Limited, and Burlington, Vermont, U.S.A.: Ashgate Publishing Company.
4. Bettner, M.S., Robinson C., and McGoun E., 1994, “The Case for Qualitative Research in Finance,” International Review of Financial Analysis, 3:1, pp. 1–18.
5. Burrell, Gibson and Morgan, Gareth, 1979, Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis, Hants, England: Gower Publishing Company Limited.
6. Cairncross, Frances, 1997, The Death of Distance: How the Communications Revolution Will Change Our Lives, Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.
7. Chomsky, Noam, 1989, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies, Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press.
8. Elliott, Philip, 1974, “Selection and Communication in a Television Production: A Case Study,” in Tuchman, Gaye, (ed.), The TV Establishment: Programming for Power and Profit, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Chapter 4, pp. 72-90.
9. Epstein, Edward Jay, 1973, News from Nowhere: Television and the News, New York, New York: Random House.
10. Gans, Herbert, 1974, Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste, New York, New York: Basic Books.
11. Herman, Edward S. and Chomsky, Noam, 1988, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, New York, New York: Pantheon Books.
12. Herman, Edward S. and McChesney, Robert W., (2004), The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism, London, England: Continuum.
13. Hirsch, Paul and Newcomb, Horace, 1987, “Television as a Cultural Forum,” in Newcomb, Horace, (ed.), Television: The Critical View, New York, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 455-470.
14. Kelley, David and Downey, Roger, 1990, “Liberalism and Free Speech,” in Lichtenberg, Judith, (ed.), Democracy and the Mass Media, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, Chapter 2, pp. 66-101.
15. Kellner, Douglas, 1990, Television and the Crisis of Democracy, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
16. Leys, Colin, 1999, “The Public Sphere and the Media: Market Supremacy versus Democracy,” in Panitch, Leo and Leys, Colin, (eds.), Global Capitalism versus Democracy: Socialist Register 1999, New York, New York: Monthly Review Press, pp. 314-335.
17. Mayer-Schonberger, Viktor and Hurley, Deborah, 2000, “Globalization and Communication,” in Nye, Joseph S., (ed.), Governance in a Globalizing World, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, Chapter 6, pp. 135-154.
18. McChesney, Robert W., 1997, Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy, New York, New York: Seven Stories Press.
19. McChesney, Robert W., Wood, Ellen Meiksins, and Foster, John Bellamy, (eds.), 1998, Capitalism and the Information Age: The Political Economy of the Global Communication Revolution,
20. Parenti, Michael, 1993, Inventing Reality: The Politics of News Media, New York, New York: St. Martin’s Press.
21. Rapping, Elayne, 1987, The Looking Glass World of Nonfiction TV, Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press.
22. Schiller, Herbert I., 1973, The Mind Managers, Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon Press.
23. Schiller, Herbert I., 1976, Communication and Cultural Domination, White Plains, New York: International Arts and Sciences Press, Inc.
24. Schiller, Herbert I., 1989, Culture, Inc: The Corporate Takeover of Public Expression, New York, New York: Oxford University Press.
25. Skornia, Harry J., 1968, Television and the News: A Critical Appraisal, Palo Alto, California: Pacific Books.

There are two emerging trends that will most powerfully transform human society during the first half of the century: 1) increasing intelligence of the emerging planetary network of people, computers, and information technology (1), and 2) increasing interconnection of human biology with information technology (2). In this paper, I explore the potential of these two trends by combining global brain theory and transhuman theory, within a humanistic psychology framework. According to global brain theory, the first trend of increasing planetary connection will likely transform human organizational capabilities, allowing us to create distributed collective intelligence systems to solve global problems related to resource scarcity, international conflict, and ecological instability (3). According to transhuman theory, the second trend of increasing interconnection of human biology with information technology will likely transform human nature enabling us to extend our senses, enhance our biology, increase our ability to acquire knowledge, and radically transform the way we interconnect with other humans on a planetary scale (i.e. trans- or super-humanity) (4). From this theoretical exploration, we are left with the futuristic vision of a post-scarcity, post-conflict, self-organized super-human civilization, where humans are fully in control their own life history, capable of enhancing their own biologically inherited capacities with technology, and eventually able to directly interconnect mind-to-mind (5).

However, the question remains open regarding what a globally interconnected, technologically enhanced, and individually liberated super-human species would do, often inspiring metaphors of “singularity” (6). In order to better explore this future possibility space, I utilize and update the psychological concept of the “hierarchy of needs” (7), individuals will satisfy the following needs in a generalized hierarchy: physiology, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization, with self-actualization being seen as an open process of actualizing latent creative potentialities (8). More recent conceptualizations of the hierarchy of needs further explore the characteristics of self-actualization potentialities (9), but also include a level beyond self-actualization: self-transcendence (or: selfless actualization) where pure being and bliss take full form (10). This conception accounts for many ancient philosophical, spiritual, and intellectual traditions that have recognized the importance of “ego-transcending” states of being (11). However, this extension does not go far enough considering transhuman theory and evidence (12), and therefore I attempt to further extend our conceptualization of the hierarchy of needs with an explicit “multi-personal” dimension, i.e. the ability of multiple human minds to interconnect towards self-actualization/transcendence.

Therefore, I conclude this paper by exploring the potential for a multi-personal hierarchy of needs, where a post-scarcity, post-conflict super-human species develops towards planetary self-actualization, potentially culminating with the formation of a “Being-Net” (13) (historically referred to as a “Noosphere” (14), “Super-Being” (15), “Gaiafield” (16), “Global Brain Mindplex” (17), “World-Wide Mind” (18), “Brain-Net” (19)). In my conception, the Being-Net would be the free aggregation of all self-actualization human minds in planetary interconnection.

References and Notes

1. Glenn, J.C., Gordon, T.J., & Florescu, E. 2014. State of the future 2013-14. The Millennium Project.
2. Kurzweil, R. 2005. The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Penguin.
3. Heylighen, F. 2015. Return to Eden? Promises and Perils on the Road to Global Superintelligence. In: Goertzel, B. & Goertzel, T. (eds.), The End of the Beginning: Life, Society and Economy on the Brink of the Singularity. Humanity+ Press. Retrieved from: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/BrinkofSingularity.pdf
4. More, M. & Vita-More, N. (eds.). 2013. The Transhumanist Reader: Classical and Contemporary Essays on Science, Technology, and Philosophy of the Human Future. Wiley-Blackwell.
5. Kaku, M. 2014. The Future of Mind: Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind. Doubleday.
6. Vinge, V. 1993. The Coming Technological Singularity. Whole Earth Review, 11-22.
7. Maslow, A. 1943. A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50: 370-396.
8. Maslow, A. 1971. The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York: Penguin.
9. Heylighen, F. 1992. A Cognitive-Systemic Reconstruction of Maslow’s Theory of Motivation. Behavioral Science, 37: 39-58.
10. Koltko-Rivera, M.E. 2006. Rediscovering the Later Version of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: Self-Transcendence and Opportunities for Theory, Research, and Unification. In: Review of General Psychology, 10: 302-317.
11. A.K. 1989. Beyond self-actualization. International Journal of the Advancement of Counselling, 12: 13-27.
12. Nicolelis, M. 2011. Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines – and How It Will Change Our Lives. Macmillan.
13. Last, C. 2015. Big Historical Foundations for Deep Future Speculations. In Press: Foundations of Science.
14. Teilhard de Chardin, P. 1955. The Phenomenon of Man. London: Collins.
15. Turchin, V. 1977. The Phenomenon of Science. New York: Columbia University Press.
16. Russell, P. 1983. The Global Brain Awakens: Our Next Evolutionary Leap. Palo Alto: Global Brain Inc.
17. Goertzel, B. 2003. The Potential Emergence of Multiple Levels of Focused Consciousness in Communities of AI’s and Humans. Novamente LLC.
18. Chorost, M. 2011. World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity. Simon and Schuster.
19. Nicolelis, M. 2011. Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines – and How It Will Change Our Lives. Macmillan.

Introduction

We have heard much about the potential of networked communications to design alternative monies and payment systems in recent years. Innovations such as cryptocurrencies, peer-to-peer lending schemes, mobile remittance and microfinancing solutions are often presented as technical fixes to many of the problems associated with money proper: “Can’t gain access to affordable credit? Suffering the fallout of a commercial banking crisis? PayPal blocked your account because they don’t like your politics? There’s an app for that!” The potential for technical innovations to make our money otherwise or to support the collective management of money is exciting, but this paper looks at the convergence of networked ICTs and the future of money from a different perspective. Alongside these grassroots innovations in money, many powerful stakeholders in the communications space such as Internet service providers, mobile network operators and social media services are expanding their interests towards money. The landscape they are helping to shape is a very different to the one imagined by peer-to-peer and money activists.

Mobile Money

This is particularly so in the case of mobile networks, where financial services are growing in significance. These include mobile payments, marketing, transfer services and banking facilities of different kinds. The shape these services take is very different in developed and emerging markets. In emerging markets, for example, mobile money services are already well elaborated, provisioning microfinance, loans, payments and remittances often in the absence of traditional financial actors such as banks. These include airtime trading and mobile money services like M-Pesa and Smart Money in the Philippines. More recently, technical advancements are also driving the growth of mobile payments in developed markets. These innovations include Near-Field Communications, Bluetooth Low Energy technologies and Hosted Card Emulation as well as the design of mobile wallets and point of sale innovations from companies such as Square, Apple and PayPal.

Telecommunications are the new banks

Our money now rides the ‘rails’ of mobile network infrastructure. Historically informational networks have always acted as bridges for cash, from cash carriers and pneumatic tube systems through to the histories of American Express and Western Union - a postal services and a telegraphy service respectively who turned from the transmission of messages to the secure transmission of currencies. But today this situation has intensified as communications networks build portals onto existing networks for financial transactivity. Telecommunications companies, mobile network operators, handset and hardware manufacturers, operator billing providers, software providers and social media platforms all play a significant role in the future of electronic and specifically mobile payments. Communications firms are developing their own payments propositions, going so far as to issue private currencies and new money-like instruments or even acting as de facto banks in some emerging markets. These examples include the issuance of phone credit as currencies, tweets as peer-to-peer cash transfers and Snapchat’s easy money transfer system Snapcash.

What are the implications of this convergence for the culture, political economy and governance of future monetary systems, when agencies that control the flow of information now also control the flow of value? How will the political economy of mobile networks- from algorithmic systems, through to handsets and radio access infrastructure - shape the geography of access in the mobile payments space and, in turn, the future of money?

Methods

While providing a broad overview of the political economy of the mobile payments space, this paper will focus on one core aspect of mobile money in developed markets: the aggregation and monetisation of transactional data by mobile network operators. The paper explores how this practice of data-capture is facilitated by existing enclosures and sociotechnical infrastructures in proprietary mobile networks, demonstrating how this in turn leads to new modalities of control over mobility, work and life. This falls within the remit of broader enquiries about the monetisation of user-generated data and content in the Internet and social media platforms, focusing specifically on those that are produced through monetary exchanges. 

Gateways, transactions fees and data monetisation

Questions about the interrelationship of user-generated data and money are very significant within the context of mobile services in the Global North, where advertising (particularly location based services), data monetisation and cross-selling revenues have become more significant than fee-based revenues. As society becomes 'cashless', companies have a larger business, and a more valuable one, in closing the loop for offline transactions and helping deliver customers’ to advertisers. Mobile network operators are looking to incorporate advanced data analysis into new payment innovations, capturing transactions at the point of sale. In a similar model to the 'follow the free' dictum of the platform web, linked payment data associated with a financial transaction is now much more valuable than direct payment for that service through a denominated currency. Instead, new modes of exchange such as airtime and data are the more valuable currencies of the mobile network.

One such example is WEVE, a joint venture comprising three of the United Kingdom’s four key network operators, EE, O2 UK and Vodafone UK and focused on combining the capabilities of advertising with mobile payments. Services include an interoperable mobile payments wallet, mobile marketing campaigns and targeted location-based services. The Boston-based company JANA develops a different model: while relying on user data and attention, JANA pays mobile phone customers in the operator’s currency of choice - airtime credit, in return for consuming and paying attention to branded content.

Conclusions

The effects of these systems are far-reaching. The most obvious is the introduction of targeted advertising and location-based services informed by transaction histories. In virtualising money, non-cash payments materialise previously latent informational traces of who transferred money to whom and in exchange for what. The managers of the bit-pipe can monetise these traces, but there are other far-reaching effects to the wealth of data from consumer transactions. We can identify implications beyond simply being pushed unwanted recommendations or location-based services. Indeed, monitoring purchasing information underpins new forms of governmentality in both online and offline spaces. And the effects of such scrutiny will be unevenly distributed - for example, individual purchase tracking of low-income families or of individuals who have claimed bankruptcy or insolvency.

Introduction

From ancient times, understanding the phenomenon of music and building musical structures were associated with mathematics. This report analyses relation of music with binary structures, the example of which is the binary number system, widely used in computer calculations and informatics, noise-immunity coding signals with using dyadic groups and so forth. Principles of binary opposition (or yin-yang principles) permeate living matter at different levels of its organization. Specific examples of this are the complementary pairs of nitrogenous bases of DNA molecules of heredity; division of the alphabet of these nitrogenous bases into pairs of purine-pyrimidine; organization of muscular movement on the base of muscle pairs of flexor-extensor; pairs of male-female, which give life to new generations, etc. In the field of musical culture, the binary principle is realized, in particular, in the existence of two-interval musical scales.

Main part

This report focuses on the analysis of development of two-interval musical scales on the base of the well-known algorithm of Pythagoras. For the author, the initial types of such musical scales were the known two-interval musical scales: the Pythagorean musical scale and so called pentagram scales (or Fibonacci-stage scales) from [1, 2].

Mathematical constructs of such musical scales are based on the Pythagorean algorithm that uses a geometric progression with special coefficients of the progression. For example, in the case of the Pythagorean musical scale, this algorithm uses a quint coefficient of 3/2 for the progression that leads to the construction of the sequence of notes do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si-do on the interval of frequencies {1, 2} of one octave with basing on the following algorithmic steps:

1. Taking the first seven members of such geometrical progression with the quint factor 3/2, which begins from the inverse value of the quint: (3/2)^-1, (3/2)⁰, (3/2)¹, (3/2)², (3/2)³, (3/2)⁴, (3/2)⁵;
2. Returning into the octave interval {1, 2} for those members of this sequence, values of which overstep the limits of this interval; this returning is made for these values by means of their multiplication or division with the number 2. As a result of this operation, the new sequence is appeared (this sequence can be named "the geometrical progression with the returning into the octave "): 2*(3/2)^-1, (3/2)⁰, (3/2)¹, (3/2)²/2, (3/2)³/2, (3/2)⁴/4, (3/2)⁵/4;
3. The permutation of these seven members in accordance with their increasing values from 1 up 2 (the number 2 is included in this sequence as the end of the octave): (3/2)⁰, (3/2)²/2, (3/2)⁴/4, 2*(3/2)^-1, (3/2)¹, (3/2)³/2, (3/2)⁵/4, 2.

In this last sequence, a ratio of the greater number to the adjacent smaller number refers to as the interval factor. Two kinds of interval factors exist in this sequence only: 9/8, which is named the tone-interval T, and 256/243, which is named the semitone-interval S. One can check that the sequence of interval factors in this case is T-T-S-T-T-T-S. These five tone-intervals and two semitone-intervals cover the octave precisely: (9/8)⁵ * (256/243)² = 2. If one takes not 7, but 6 or 8 members in the initial quint geometrical progression (see the first step of the algorithm), then the same Pythagorean algorithm does not give a binary sequence of interval factors T and S because three kinds of interval factor arise.

If the coefficient of the progression in the Pythagorean algorithm is equal not to 3/2, but to the square of the golden section (1+5^0.5)/2=1,618... then (with a certain number of members of the initial geometric progression) special two-interval scales are formed, which are called "genetic" by virtue of their relationship with the parameters of molecular genetic system [1, 2].

In this report, the author represents his mathematical theory, which allows to determine for what values of the coefficients of a geometric progression the Pythagorean algorithm generates two-interval scales for certain number of members in the initial progression. The author shows that some well-known in the history of music two-interval musical scales from different historical periods are algorithmically related because they are based on the same Pythagorean algorithm (the difference between them is determined only by differences in the values of their algorithmic parameters). In this theory, a theorem has been proved that only three kinds of scales can be created on the base of the algorithm of Pythagoras: one-interval (rare), two-interval (are relatively regularly) and three-interval (mostly).

The author has also analyzed a logarithmic representation of the algorithm of Pythagoras and he has created a convenient graphical method for the analysis of musical scales, generated by the algorithm for different values of its parameters. He has solved the problem of automation and visual analysis such algorithmic processes of creation of two-interval scales. The solution to this problem is based on the writing of a specialized computer program and a visual representation of the family two-interval scales with a different number of their stages in the form of concentric circles, such as the following:

(see PDF version for Figure).

For the algorithm of Pythagoras the inverse problem has been also solved: knowing the sequence of values of the number of stages inside two-interval scales, which are nested each into other, how one can determine the appropriate multiplying factor. In connection with the decision of this problem the author has developed a theory of the "Pascal's fractal": it is a geometric tree of numerical structure with its recursive organization, in which each number is formed as the sum of the two numbers above it (similar to the Pascal's triangle).

Music is widely used in today's global connections among people and nations. Development of methods and means of musical culture through in-depth understanding of the fundamentals of musical scales can contribute positive effects of musical influences on society and its members, including possibilities of music therapy.

References

1. Petoukhov S.V. Matrix genetics, algebras of the genetic code, noise-immunity. RCD: Moscow, Russia, 2008, 316 p. (in Russian, http://petoukhov.com/)
2. Darvas G., Koblyakov A., Petoukhov S., Stepanyan I. Symmetries in molecular-genetic systems and musical harmony. Symmetry: Culture and Science, 2012, vol. 23, № 3-4, p. 343-375.