Peirce
explained semiosis as a three-part
process: there must always be a bridge between the sign and what the sign
represents,
and this bridge Peirce called the
interpretant. The interpretant is the process by which the sign is defined.
We can only define a sign in terms of other signs of the same nature. A
child discovers fundamental paradox of the dictionary: that if you do not
know what some words mean you can never
use the dictionary to learn what other words mean. The definition of any
word, if pursued far enough through the
dictionary, will lead you in circles.
This paradox is the foundation of semiotics. A sign system is a set of rules
for relating elements. The rules
are arbitrary, and the system they generate is self-contained.
In Peirce's terms, the computer system
itself
becomes the interpretant for each sign;,
and interpretation becomes the process of following links according to the constraints
of the computer's logic.
In semiotic theory, a sign is not a static
thing, but rather a function, a relation between the signified and the
signifier: the sign function
relates expression to contents. As Umberto Eco explains it, "the
classical notion of a 'sign' dissolves itself into a
highly complex network of changing relationships.
The electronic writing space is not a
metaphor for signification, but rather a
technology of signification.
Texts themselves become programs that the
writer builds and the reader
executes. The writer puts in not only verbal signs, but rules for the
interrelation of signs, and the reader
plays the writer's game by following
those rules to see how the verbal signs fit together.
Each textual program embodies a
range of possible meanings, many of
which even the writer may not have foreseen.
Just like electronic media, there are some
conventions of representation: in a printed book, the index and table of
contents are conventions to help us find
our way through the text. Yet we as readers do much more of the work of reference.
Intertextuality is more than the
references within a text and allusions between texts that
are common in literature; it is the interrelation of all texts in the same
subject, language, or culture. Mapping in the electronic writing space can
be a collective process: the writer creates
some connections, which pass to the first reader, who may add new
connections and pass the results on to
another reader, and so on. This
tradition, this passing on of the text from writer to reader, who then
becomes a writer for
other readers, is nothing new; it is the
literal meaning of the word "tradition."
Semiotics regards representation and
interpretation as a process without end. In Peirce's system there are three
elements in the process: the
sign, the thing represented, and the interpretant. The interpretant, the
definition of the sign, may in turn be
treated as a sign requiring definition. The process continues in theory as
long as we like, because each new interpretant
allows for a further interpretation. In
fact any practical system is limited.
No electronic text can be infinite--not
only because it is the work of finite human beings, but also
because the computer itself, as a
technology of writing, is finite. All computers must operate with a limited
memory and a
finite speed of computation. So in
electronic writing, the network of elements must always be limited, and the
act of interpretation must
reconcile itself to this limitation.
Peirce had imagined this world and the
human's place in it. People for Peirce were like
words. "The man-sign," he goes on to say, "acquires
information, and comes to mean more than he did before. But so do
words. Does not electricity mean more now than it did in the days of
Franklin? . . . In fact, therefore, men and words
reciprocally educate each other; each
increase of a man's information involves and is involved by, a corresponding increase
of a word's information".
With this bold metaphor Peirce was presenting
what might be called the working philosophy for today's electronic writer,
who indeed lives in a world of
interconnected symbols that reciprocally educate both each other and the
writer. For the
new readers and writers, the human mind
itself becomes a text to be fashioned and explored according to the
principles of
the electronic writing space. But the
idea of the mind as text is older than Peirce.
The universal character itself was another
manifestation of the desire for a utopia of letters--like the medieval and
modern encyclopedias and now the
electronic library and artificial intelligence. The computer as hypertext
is the newest in a long line of candidates for the universal book. And like
all the previous candidates, the
computer makes the seductive promise to
break down the barrier between thought and writing, to join the mind and writing
surface into a seamless whole.