Cultural science explores the semioverse
By carstenherrmannpillath | March 25, 2010
Sometimes I need many years until I can read a book on my never-ending reading list. That happened with David Deutsch’s ‘Fabric of Reality’. A couple of months ago I did, and it was a mind-blowing experience, because I discovered a physical approach to cultural science.
In this book, Deutsch, the father of quantum computation, presents an argument on the coherence of knowledge structures across parallel universes. Well, for the non-physicist the latter idea may not seem too obvious, unless she is a sci-fi aficionado, but let me just say that many physicists adopt the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which states that the different propensities of quantum states just describe different states in different parallel universes, the conjunction of which makes up the multiverse, in one parlance. Deutsch makes the point that this variety is constrained for objects that undergo evolution by natural selection. His example is the genome. He posits that random (hence quantum) variations in the genomic structure will be channelled by natural selection in a convergent process across parallel universes. So, the universes are connected by a set of identical objects, which a much more limited range of possible states.
When reading this, I was suddenly aware that this argument extends to all possible applications of Darwinian theory. So, if one accepts the view that evolutionary theory is also valid for analyzing culture, then this would imply that all different physical expressions of evolution would link up the different universes, such as, for example, technological artefacts or memes. Deutsch say that these stable structures represent knowledge. Well, this is certainly true for all symbolic knowledge, cultural items etc.
I rushed forward with using Lotman’s term of the ’semiosphere’ to refer to this stable connection in a paper that was recently published in the journal ENTROPY.
Meanwhile, I changed the name to semioverse. So, we have got a connection between culture, biology and physics. In terms of the physics, I am currently working an an energetic interpretation of cultural items as externalized artefacts. This is an old idea in anthropology, which would receive a fresh interpretation in that general context. This can be related with biosemiotics, which I started to study as a consequence. So it seems that the Deutsch hypothesis helps to overcome disciplnary barriers in a new way. Deutsch himself only had biochemical structures in mind. But in a naturalistic approach to culture, such as developed in my recently published book ‘The Economics of Identity and Creativity‘, these material structures are much more universal.
So I would like to propose a new definition of cultural science: The science of the semioverse.
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Cultural Science Viewing Stats
By JohnHartley | February 1, 2010
Cultural Science – by numbers
We can report the viewing statistics for cultural-science.org since it was launched in July 2008, up to 22 January 2010.
The website as a whole has attracted over 20,000 visitors:
| Cultural-science.org | |||
| Year | Unique Visitors | Hits | Downloads (by gigabyte) |
| 2008 | 4,962 | 77,719 | 6.15 GB |
| 2009 | 17, 114 | 207,890 | 9.12 GB |
The top 10 source countries for visitors to the site were:
| Top 10 source countries | |||
| 2008 (Jul – Dec) | 2009 | 2010 (Jan) | |
| 1 | USA (22,000 pages) | USA (42,000 pages) | USA (2,375 pages) |
| 2 | Australia | Australia | Russian Federation |
| 3 | European Country | Russian Federation | Australia |
| 4 | Great Britain | Ukraine | Great Britain |
| 5 | Germany | Germany | Germany |
| 6 | France | Great Britain | Luxembourg |
| 7 | Unknown | China | Netherlands |
| 8 | Italy | European Country | European Country |
| 9 | Netherlands | France | Canada |
| 10 | Canada | Netherlands | Estonia |
| Total countries: 101 | Total countries: 137 | Total countries: 80 | |
The graphs on the left below show the top 10 countries by year and the graphs on the right represent the monthly traffic by year.
2010
2009
2008
Cultural Science Journal has attracted over 18,450 viewers, with 21,238 reads of articles. Stats by issue are as follows:
| Cultural Science Journal | |||
| Issue | Released | Views | Top Article Views |
| Vol 1:1 Creative Destruction | May 2008 | 9052 | 1791 |
| Vol 1:2 Creating Value | Oct 2008 | 8187 | 1677 |
| Vol 2:1 New Directions | Nov 2009 | 1211 | 249 |
The blog – Popper Juice – has had over 4,000 views. Apart from the home page the most popular entry was Carsten Herrmann-Pillath’s ‘The financial crisis: a humble evolutionary economist’s perspective’ (17 September 2008).
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“Collapse”: What’s Happening to Public Thought?
By JohnHartley | January 21, 2010
From: John Hartley
21 January 2010
Dear All,
I’ve been thinking about Clay Shirky’s “Shock of Inclusion” on the Edge site (thanks for the link Jason!)
Public Thought and Shirky’s Shock
I really liked this short piece when I first read it, but there is also a niggling problem with it, which I’m going to try to write through. Along the way I’ll include other materials that came my way while I was thinking about this, which makes the piece as a whole a record of the actual process of “public thought” (someone thinking in public), so it may seem a bit long, but most of it is the cited material – the evidence.
First, let me just remind you of what Shirky said. The paragraphs that made me think (my bolding) are these:
This shock of inclusion, where professional media gives way to participation by two billion amateurs (a threshold we will cross this year) means that average quality of public thought has collapsed; when anyone can say anything any time, how could it not? If all that happens from this influx of amateurs is the destruction of existing models for producing high-quality material, we would be at the beginning of another Dark Ages.
The beneficiaries of the system where making things public was a privileged activity, whether academics or politicians, reporters or doctors, will complain about the way the new abundance of public thought upends the old order, but those complaints are like keening at a wake; the change they fear is already in the past. The real action is elsewhere.
Given what we have today, the Internet could easily become Invisible High School, with a modicum of educational material in an ocean of narcissism and social obsessions. We could, however, also use it as an Invisible College, the communicative backbone of real intellectual and civic change, but to do this will require more than technology. It will require that we adopt norms of open sharing and participation, fit to a world where publishing has become the new literacy.
The idea that most struck a chord was this one: that the “average quality of public thought has collapsed.”
Shirky probably meant this in a banal, arithmetic sense – given the same task (say, writing opinion columns in the press), two billion amateurs will score a lower individual average on any quality measure than a few experienced professional specialists. It seems therefore that he is conceding the more means worse argument (a classic manoeuvre of the educated Left), for he talks about “the shock of inclusion” as (potentially) “another Dark Ages” where “pancake people” (widely-spread and thin) connect through “an ocean of narcissism and social obsessions.”
Average Collapse
I’m not ready to concede that argument. It has no basis in either maths or in history.
In terms of the maths, let’s say that among internet users, only a minuscule one in a thousand (0.1 percent) qualify as high (as opposed to “average”) “quality.” Out of two billion users, that still amounts to two million quality creators – more than any previous mass medium could muster. Of course the real proportion will be much higher. When I first went to university, only 4 percent of the UK population were graduates; now it is more like 40 percent. Not all graduates are high quality, so let’s stick to the lower figure. Four percent of 2bn is 80 million – the population of Germany. Could you call participation by such numbers in “public thought” a “collapse”?
In terms of history, more of anything worthwhile has never meant worse – more education, healthcare, affluence, freedom, comfort, intellectual or entrepreneurial activity … whatever …. has consistently resulted in, well, more. Growing up as a poor kid without a breadwinner in the family, I still had better dental care than Ramesses the Great, better education than the Queen of England (who never went to school), more intellectual freedom than the pope … and so on. In short, extending once-priestly or royal privileges to everyone benefits … everyone. Duh!
Why would this not be true also of “public thought”? So let’s hear no more of the collapse of the “average quality of public thought” in general.
Journalistic Collapse
None of this crossed my mind when I first read Shirky’s piece, however. I took him to mean something else, because my imagination was caught by that word “collapse.” Read the rest of this entry »
Topics: cultural science | 2 Comments »
A Cultural Science seminar series with Jeremy Hunsinger
By admin | July 13, 2009
The ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation is delighted to invite you to a Cultural Science (http://cultural-science.org/) seminar series with:
Jeremy Hunsinger – co-Founder and co-Director of the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture at Virginia Tech
Topics:
Interpretive methods, Actor-network theory/ies, and Science
Date: Tuesday 21 July 2009
Time: 10.30am – 11.30am
Venue: Queensland University of Technology
Z2 Block, Level 5, Room 502
Creative Industries Precinct
Musk Avenue, Kelvin Grove
RSVP: infocci@qut.edu.au by
Tuesday 14 July 2009
Abstract:
This talk will confront questions surrounding the relations of interpretation and the idea of the scientific through a consideration of interpretive methods and in particular actor-network theory. Within the field of possible interpretations, science centres on questions about the world, but the question that interpretivist methods must confront is what constitutes the world that is interpreted, in other words, what is the ontological status of interpreted objects in the world? Actor-network theory collapses ontological status and recognizes the existence of relations as significant as what are thought of as networks, transforming ontological constructs from essences to relations, and with relations we have a new object of interpretation that then generalized through the sciences along the diverse frameworks of interpretation that in part define each discipline and interdisciplinary science. These parallels highlight the possibilities of rigorous, scientific interpretive methods and why those methods are likely much more traditionally understood as science, than modern formal methods and modelling.
Critical Technical Practices: Praxis and knowledge production in hacker labs
Date: Monday 27 July 2009
Time: 10.30am – 11.30am
Venue: Queensland University of Technology
Z2 Block, Level 5, Room 502
Creative Industries Precinct
Musk Avenue, Kelvin Grove
RSVP: infocci@qut.edu.au by
Monday 20 July 2009
Abstract:
This talk looks at the rise of hacker labs and hacker collectives as models of critical technical practice. Critical technical practice is a method of exploring, designing, building, and testing theoretical perspectives, usually social, political, cultural, and ethical theories, as opposed to merely technological designs. By analyzing the rise of these hacker collectives, through their internet presences, I argue that these are the next generation of a series of subcultural systems of technical empowerment and a specific subaltern to the predominant means of knowledge production and dissemination. I conclude by arguing that academia, through investigating the successes of these knowledge production and dissemination forms, could probably remodel areas of mode-2 research into similarly effective learning environments that develop critical technical practices in both faculty and students.
Bio:
Jeremy Hunsinger co-founded and co-directs the Center for Digital Discourse and Culture at Virginia Tech. He attended the Oxford Internet Institutes 2004 Summer Doctoral Programme and was Graduate Fellow of the NSF Workshop on Values in Information Systems Design. He has been Junior Ethics Fellow at the Center for Information Policy Research at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee from 2007?2010. He coedited the International Handbook of Internet Research (2009) and the International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments (2006). He is co?editor of the journal, Learning Inquiry and the book series Transdisciplinary Studies. Currently, he is co-editing a special issue of the journal Learning, Media, & Technology on the topic of Learning in Virtual Worlds with Aleks Krotoski and is editing a special issue of the journal Learning Inquiry on the topic of Learning Infrastructures in the Humanities and Social Sciences.
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Herrmann-Pillath on Herrmann-Pillath
By carstenherrmannpillath | June 22, 2009
Facing the task of completing the book on the Economics of Identity, this discussion far away in beautiful Brisbane was extremely helpful clear up my mind. Evidently, an excellent example of the extended brain hypothesis! Thank you all! Meanwhile, I spent a couple of days at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Glasgow, where I presented some of these ideas. Again, I could clarify some points that need more elaboration.
One of the central concerns was the perennial experience of the clash between science and humanities folks, with the former emphasizing reductionism and analysis, and the latter holism, subjectivism and interpretation. This issue has also a very serious normative dimension, as the adherents to the latter position claim that this is also the very foundation of human autonomy, dignity and responsibility. How can we reconcile this contradiction?
A central topic of the discussions was neuroeconomics. One participant, Stuart Derbyshire argued that minds are inherently social, and that therefore neuroscience reductionism does not work. That was an eye-opener for me, because in my presentation, taking place before his one, I had made a simple, but fundamental point:
To me, one of the most serious misunderstandings in a large part of the literature on brain and mind is the assumption that brains and minds are co-extensive, in the sense that the boundaries of the mind and the boundaries of the brain coincide, independent from which position is taken regarding emergence, supervenience or whatever kind of relation between the two. This tendency is particularly strong in neurophilosophy, where minds are necessarily seen as neuronal networks.
I think that this is fundamentally wrong. Stuart’s position that minds are social corresponds to a possible position in the philosophy of mind that asserts that brains are brains, and minds are systems of brains. Minds as systems of brains are interconnected via non-neuronal physical mechanisms. This is precisely the ontological difference between mind and brain, but it does not imply Cartesian dualism. This is Stuart’s statement naturalized. Mind emerges in networks that include at least two physically different media of connectedness that cross body boundaries.
There is an immediate consequence of this, and that is subjectivism naturalized. As every single brain is unique, there is a probability of zero that structurally similar connections between brains will produce the same effects within brains. In other words, if, for example, we see language as a physical medium connecting brains (soundwaves), the brain functionings triggered by linguistic signals will never be identical across individuals.
In this brief note, I do not want to expand on that. Actually, the wonderful summary of my ideas in the previous entry reveals that it is all in there already, yet with less simplicity. I add another idea from Glasgow. If we look at these brain-brain systems, it is evident from many results of complexity theory and related formal disciplines, that these systems will never be able to analyze themselves (as in the software debugging problem). From this follows, that we, as scientific observers, will always face an ontological gap in explaining those systems. This implies that both positions that I mentioned in the beginning, the reductionist science view and the holistic-subjectivistic humanities view, are right. Neither position is ever able to explain the totality of the phenomenon of mind, once we adopt one position in extreme, we will always bounce back to the other position, because there will be an explanatory gap. For example, we will never achieve a fully naturalistic empirical view on meaning.
I posit that this insight corresponds to the wave/particle dualism in physics, so we have a principle of duality of cultural science. I claim that this principle of duality is fundamental for a naturalistic view on culture, and this resolves the perennial debate over the two views on human mind and cultural life.
This can be most fruitfully applied in many areas of research. For example, media studies. Media can be seen as physical connections among people. That implies that technology makes a fundamental difference in how brains work. Indeed, scholars today agree that writing, as compared to speaking, enables the mind to think differently, precisely because the physical structure is different (e.g. storability). At the same time, writing allows for new expressions of subjectivity, i.e. the uniqueness of brains. In the duality view, research on new media such as the internet necessarily must be research into technology and cultural creativity.
The principle of duality also implies that Actor-network theory is a congenial point of view, thus allowing for a conceptual synthesis also across the borders to social science.
That’s what I learned from Glasgow.
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Hermann-Pillath on Cultural Science – A Summary of Notes
By thomaspetzold | June 19, 2009
Having finished our group reading exercise on one of the foundations of cultural science, here is a summary of notes on Carsten’s draft book manuscript ‘The Economics of Identity and Creativity’ (UQ Press, forthcoming). Notes have been deliberately taken in headword-style to cover, at a glance, the definitions of ‘cultural science’ as well as important associated keywords such as creativity, language, knowledge and identity (NB: 99% are Carsten’s own words and phrasings).
Cultural Science
_is a special branch of evolutionary theory that deals with the evolution of collectknowledge in networks of human brains, mediated by artefacts, in particular language
_investigates into the causes and mechanisms of the generation and the diffusion of knowledge embodied in collectives of individuals and artefacts
_describes and classifies emergent patterns in the evolution of those collectives
_avoids political value statements
_adopts a naturalistic perspective on meaning
_approaches cultural meaning as an emergent property of interaction in the material world
_builds on a generalised co-evolutionary interpretation of Darwinism
_argues that the capacity for culture has evolved according to the Darwinian logic, but resulted into the emergence of culture as an independent domain because this independence was functional in an evolutionary context
_is closely affiliated with the analysis of language (from the philosophy of language to linguistics)
_is very receptive to actor-network theory (ATN)
_denies the very possibility to separate analytically between a ‘within brain/mind’ rationally and the embedding structures
Creativity
_is seen as an irreducible property of a collective, the network
_is an essential aspect of cultural evolution, in the sense that the latter continuously generates new knowledge
_is a cultural phenomenon by necessity, because all creative acts change the identities of other entities beyond the carriers of the act
_is seen as a property of evolving networks of individuals and things related to them in simple terms, creativity is a collective phenomenon, and it involves the role of things as mediators of human action, as they are external forms of knowledge
Identity
_is not a psychological one but an ontological one and needs elementary philosophical treatment
_is a crossing point of complex interactions both synchronically and diachronically, and it defines the individual as an agent
_is the most basic concept for defining the individual
_boils down to the problem of how individuals and populations relate
_is an essential functioning in terms of control in complex networks with other individuals
_is continuously evolving
Naturalism
_means that we can use methods and models of the natural sciences to understand and explain cultural phenomena
_as a philosophical position is to adopt evolutionary theory as a general framework for cultural analysis
Knowledge
_is seen in the light of naturalism, i.e. not the mentalist approach but the externalist one where the human mind is not limited to the brain, but emerges from the interaction between brain and environment
_encompasses all kinds of explicit and tacit knowledge, and includes the playful generation of knowledge
_ is an aspect of systems, but not as a mental state. It is a property of proper systems functioning, emerging from an evolutionary process
Language
_is the main causal chain linking up human brains
_the human L consists of two fundamental facts: 1. the syntax of language allows for a limitless combination of elements, 2. the emergence of new elements, hence, meaning
_is a repository of cristallisations of conceptual blends. In language, the role of blending comes out from the working of metaphors in the process of semantic evolution
_is a repository of physical triggers of neuromemetic evolution. It is a cause of structured and reproducible processes, but it is not identical to these processes. (This is precisely the reason why meanings appear to be so fluid and open to continuous reinterpretation.
_On the first sight, the emergence of language multiplies the original dilemma of cooperation. However, this also means that evolution must have supported the emergence of a capacity to solve these additional dilemmas of language.
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Journalists & Changing Identity
By johnbanks | April 21, 2009
At yesterday’s cultural science workshop we discussed the concept of changing identity that Carsten Herrmann-Pillath develops in “The Economics of Identity and Creativity: A Cultural Science Approach” . This New York Times article (“J-Schools Play Catchup” about teaching journalism when the field is undergoing profound and sweeping transformation is precisely about the changing identity of journalists:
“it requires a new vocabulary, a new relationship with the audience — a massive social network that now talks back — and, sometimes, a new set of expectations about objectivity and timeliness.”
Brian Stelte asks, “how do you position students for an uncertain future in the media?”. Some journalism schools are teaching an ethos of innovation and entrepreneurial spirit (eg. the entrepreneurship course taught by Dan Gillmor at Arizona State). In conditions of uncertainty and precarity give your students the tools to deal with it.
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Data Visualisation
By jeanburgess | April 20, 2009
We’ve had some interesting chats around QUT lately about data visualisation, including the need for tools that make it easier to comprehend and work with large, complex data sets; and also how diversity in data representation (including creative visualisation techniques) can help us to recast research problems and the assumptions that underlie them.
There are a couple of great repositories for data visualisation projects that I know of. One that you probably know already is Visual Complexity, which aims to “leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web.”
There is also Information Aesthetics, which covers everything from infographics that aim to make complex information easier to understand, all the way through to the burgeoning field of free online social data visualisaton tools. One of the best-known of the latter is Many Eyes – an IBM-sponsored project that aims to “democratize visualization” – “enabling anyone on the internet to publish powerful interactive visualizations and start their own data conversations”. Information Aesthetics this week also reviews a new one of those called Verifiable.
Lots to play with and explore.
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The Business of User-Created Content
By johnbanks | April 20, 2009
A nice article in Slate about the so far failing business of user-generated content:
“Do You Think Bandwidth Grows on Tress?” Farhad Manjoo notes that social network sites like Youtube are “suffocating under the costs of storing it” and that “‘User-generated content’ is proving to be a financial albatross.” Of course the business of user-created content is uneven across the creative industries – it is arguable that games companies are doing well out of titles such as Spore and LittleBigPlanet. Although, still very difficult to estimate the value of user-created content generated by gamers. Does all of this validate Benkler’s argument that much of this is fundamentally a non-market phenomenon driven by non-commercial motivations. Or is this simply an example of disruptive innovation that business is still figuring out how to do well – i.e the markets, business models, firm processes and modes of organisation etc. are still emerging around user-created content?
So how can the approach that we’re calling Cultural Science contribute to these debates and discussions. How does Carsten Herrmann_Pillath’s “The Economics of Identity and Creativity: A Cultural Science Approach” help us to grapple with these issues? Perhaps posing this as an either/or is part of the problem and the salient point is that this is a dynamic and co-evolving relationship between the cultural and the economic. But a lot of work needs to be done to unpack what we mean by co-evolving here.
Thanks to Josh Green for pointing out this article via Twitter.
Topics: creative destruction, cultural science | No Comments »
The Quants and Wall Street
By johnbanks | April 14, 2009
An interesting New York Times article on physicists and other scientists working for Wall Street firms (“They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street” : “Seduced by a vision of mathematical elegance underlying some of the messiest of human activities, they apply skills they once hoped to use to untangle string theory or the nervous system to making money.” Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of The Black Swan, comments that “I think physicists should go back to the physics department and leave Wall Street alone,” But his argument seems to be not that science shouldn’t be used just that this particular brand of science gets it wrong.
It is also worthwhile reading Nasim Taleb’s article for Edge: “The Fourth Quadrant: A Map of the Limits of Statistics”
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