The
amount of information, the speed of transmission, and the
synchronicity mechanisms required and achieved in the
network-all participate in establishing a framework for remote
interaction that practically resets the time for all involved and
does away with physical distances. Literacy, by its intrinsic
characteristics, could not achieve such levels.
Finally, the computer, associated or not with networks, makes
this limit to our ability to grasp complexities even more
pressing. We have no problems with the fact that a passenger
airplane is 200 times faster than a pedestrian, and carries, at
its current capacity, 300-450 passengers plus cargo. The
computer chip itself is a conceptual accomplishment beyond
anything we can conceive of. The depth encountered in the
functioning of the digital computer-from the whole it represents
to its smallest components endowed with functions integrated in
its operation-is of a scale to which we have no intuitive or
direct access. Computers are not a better abacus. Some computer
users have even noticed that they are not even a better cash
register. They define an age of semiotic focus, in that symbol
manipulation follows language processing. (The word symbol
points to work become semiotic praxis, but this is not what I am
after here.)
In addition to the complexity it embodies, the computer makes
another distinction necessary. It replaces the world of the
continuum by a world of discrete states.
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