Significance

Frontmatter

1. Signs: Units of significance

Abstract

In walking down a high street in downtown San Francisco a year or so back I spotted a sign in a store window. The sign consisted of a large piece of paper with just three words written upon it in large type. It said, ‘SIGNS MEAN BUSINESS’. In a sense, those three simple words, taken together, sum up what we are trying to achieve within this book. We are trying to make a case for the importance of signs within systems of various forms. Signs are critically important in all forms of activity, including business. Signs are important because they establish what it is to be human. Without signs we could not think, we could not communicate what we think and we could not ensure that we collaborate successfully in our working, home and leisure activity.

Paul Beynon-Davies

2. Systems: Patterns of order

Abstract

We are surrounded by systems. Our bodies are made up of various systems such as a digestive system and a central nervous system. We live on a planet that is part of the solar system. We engage with people in groups that form social, political and economic systems. We are educated in the use of number systems. Various forms of human organisation would collapse without information systems.

Paul Beynon-Davies

3. Sign-systems: Patterns of significance

Abstract

In her Earthsea quartet of fantasy novels (Le Guin, 1993) Ursula Le Guin describes a world in which magic is a reality. Wizards perform such magic through the use of special words, and the use of these words allows wizards to manipulate things in the world of Earthsea. In a sense, this use of words is not entirely remote from our use of words in the real Earth. Word use in this fantasy world is an extension and exaggeration of our own everyday relationship with words and language.

Paul Beynon-Davies

4. Communication: The medium is not the message

Abstract

In the 1960s, Marshall McLuhan famously coined the phrase, the medium is the message (Mcluhan, 1994). By this he meant that communication media rather than the content of messages conveyed should be the focus of study. This influential statement has acquired something of the status of an aphorism: a universal statement of truth. But in our terms it makes a fundamental mistake: that of treating knowledge of communication media as equivalent to a complete understanding of communication. This chapter begins the process of explaining why communication is much more than media or channels of communication.

Paul Beynon-Davies

5. Control: Remaining viable

Abstract

Are you the same person you were ten years ago? At the level of yourself as a complete organism you would certainly say you were. At the cellular level however you are probably not since virtually every cell in your body has renewed itself over this period. So as a system your component parts have changed but as a whole you have maintained identity and remained viable. This process of ensuring the identity and viability of organisms is exercised through many layers of control.

Paul Beynon-Davies

6. Data: Form to inform

Abstract

In much popular usage, the terms data and information are not only bandied about a lot; they are frequently used interchangeably. For example, people speak of both data and information transmission, of data stores and information stores, and of data manipulation and information processing. In this chapter we elaborate upon the nature of what we referred to in Chapter 2 as forma. Forma relates to the physical and empirics levels of signs upon the semiotics ladder. Part of the reason for considering the nature of forma is that doing so helps us to better understand and to provide greater precision to the concept of data as well as highlighting the many differences between data and information.

Paul Beynon-Davies

7. Data systems: Patterns of forma

Abstract

In the previous chapter we elevated the idea of data to that of forma: the physical nature of signs. In this chapter we focus upon systems of such forma. Symbols relate together and are operated upon in data systems. A data system is a physical symbol system consisting of physical patterns (symbols) which can be combined into structures and manipulated to produce new structures. We suggest a particular interest in those data systems in which the symbols have some persistence. By persistence we mean that symbols exist for some duration over and above the communication within which the symbols were used.

Paul Beynon-Davies

8. Information: In-form to perform

Abstract

Gregory Bateson (Bateson, 1972) in his Ecology of Mind Defines information tantalisingly as any difference that makes a difference. By this he means that an environment with no evidence of, what we referred to in Chapter 4 as modulation, conveys no information. In other words, if the environment is entirely uniform in nature then it will have no effects upon organisms. Fortunately, differences are endlessly transmitted around the physical environment. Differences in the surface of an object become differences in the wavelengths of light. Differences in light signals become differences in stimulation on the sensory cells making up the eye of some organism such as a human. These differences stimulate in turn differences in patterns of activity in the nervous system of the organism which in turn stimulate differences in bodily movement such as posture and locomotion.

Paul Beynon-Davies

9. Information systems: Patterns of informa

Abstract

Grace Hooper, the creator of the business programming language COBOL, once said that ‘Life was simple before World War II. After that, we had systems.’ The Second World War was noteworthy not only for the scale of this conflict; it was also an incubator for a whole range of innovations in ‘systems’ that have affected human societies across the world up to the present day.

Paul Beynon-Davies

10. Activity: Performa

Abstract

Within his comedy As You Like It Shakespeare has his character Jacques utter the following phrase: ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts…’ Many years later the sociologist Erving Goffman played upon this idea in his classic work: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (Goffman, 1969). This led to what would become known as the dramaturgical perspective in sociology. The essence of this perspective is that we all perform every moment of our lives in the sense of enacting conventional patterns of behaviour. We all take on many roles in many continuing ‘plays’ with many other actors.

Paul Beynon-Davies

11. Activity systems: Patterns of performa

Abstract

The sociologist Norbert Elias (Elias, 1978) published a fascinating and accessible book some time ago entitled, What Is Sociology? As part of his answer to this question he considered the related question of what is society and came fundamentally to the conclusion that society is much more than a mere aggregation of individual actors. Instead, society is a system consisting of the multitude of individual actors, relationships and actions. Such actors through their relationships and actions produce and re-produce patterns (Elias refers to them as figurations), which in turn serve to constitute society. In such terms, society is considered an emergent phenomenon of a complex system of activity.

Paul Beynon-Davies

12. Organisation: Viable patterns

Abstract

The term organisation is normally associated with the social world. In the immediate post-war period the influential sociologist William H. Whyte published an influential book known as The Organization Man (Whyte, 1956). The central theme of the book considered the rise of the modern organisation and the effects of organisations upon individuals, particularly those living in the United States. It chronicled how individuals not only worked for organisations but in many ways ‘belonged’ to such organisations.

Paul Beynon-Davies

Epilogue: The nature of informatics

Abstract

Within the prologue we posed the question: what’s significant about the enactment of significance? Remember also the ‘ticket home’ initiative we described? We raised this as an example of the ‘magical’ nature of signs within systems. Let us return to this case and try to infer why a particular sign was so magical within this situation by applying some of the conceptual tools we have developed throughout this book.

Paul Beynon-Davies

Backmatter