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  1. Cyberspace as a paratactic aggregate (2 July 2003, Interconnected)
    http://interconnected.org/home/2003/07/02/cyberspace_as_a
    "The driving force of virtual worlds is towards replicating the real world in a describable way, associating semantic handles with everything, and the power of the virtual world (in the current case: cyberspace, which is the internet and more) is that these handles are programmatically available - in the past, oral culture put handles on human nature; the great scientific models put handles on the physical universe - and the drive to do this [the continuing evolution because of incremental benefits] is called the semiotcracy. This however is also the weakness of the virtual world because the selection of handles is dependant on the worldview of its authors (so we have email addresses for individuals and not groups, not properly) which shapes the reality of people living within the world."
    There are two great tides in the world today. The first is taking our expectations from the virtual worlds - which are naturally semiotcratic - and imposing them on the physical world, attempting to make it more semiotcratic. This makes it more manipulable and gives us power (the choice of the labels is also power). It happens due to expectations, the brownian motion+entropy of making these choices, the physics of representation and so on. Given the world we live in, there is an ethical imperitive to make these representations. This is the semiotcracy: a nature, a state of being, and a force. The countertide is from the real world to the virtual ones: There is a tussle between reach and sense, and as our reach increases in the virtual worlds (our ability to shape and change), so our senses must become more developed and nuanced too. This is analogous to the clearing of the protooceans which allowed/encouraged eyes, and reach.
    The semiotcracy is both good and bad. While a manipulable world with the greatest franchise is desirable, things are forced to become their representations, and new representations are changed and demand use. The next phase will be exploring the unfoldings of these two tides.

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