Semiotic Machines - an Introduction
The case of Semiotic Machines
AUTHOR: Dr. Gerd Döben-Henisch
FIRST DATE: Aug-6, 1996
DATE of LAST CHANGE: Sept-29, 1996
If the postulates (P1+), (P2) - (P5) are valid, then the introduction of objective-subjective descriptive terms should be possible in principle.
Let us now assume that some scientific community had organized a discourse to reconstruct the common structures of human experience. And let us further assume that these researchers would have done this in the manner of a Minimal Theoretical Framework as mentioned before, then there would exist a formal structure STR_c representing all main object-classes introduced so far, all relations and mappings as well as the axioms. This structure would -as a written text- have the status of an observable object and could be 'language-independent' in the way mathematics is language-independent.
Additionally one could translate the mediated objective-subjective structure STR_c into a graphical representation or into an algorithm, i.e. a computer-program. Because computer programs are only special instances of abstract automata named in the literature Turing Machines one could call those computer programs representing a sign user also Semiotic Machines.
Using Semiotic Machines for the representation of the internal processes of a -not necessarily human- sign user would allow the aesthetic representation of highly complex dynamical processes in a form manageable by humans and this would allow to built and test real theories about these internal processes which without these Semiotic Machines would not be possible.
One possible research scenario of future semiotic is conceivable where the sign user is represented in a formal theory as well as in a semiotic machine and where the semiotic machines are interrelated with a virtual world functioning as a new type of an interface to real humans. The complete interface one could name Semiotic Machine Interface.
A first prototype of such a Semiotic Machine Interface does already exist. It has been developed by the author and has been publicly demonstrated at the ars electronica festival in Linz (Austria) June 1995 and at the telepolis festival in Luxemburg November 1995 (see Döben-Henisch 1995 and 1996). These semiotic machines are 'learning' their environment and in parallel they are learning any language through interactions with 'competent speakers' as children are apprehending their language. In the prototype their learning capability is restricted to 1-word-sentences.
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