[Air-l] research - writing, printing, computing

[Luiz Carlos Baptista]

Hi all, 


I'm new on the list. I have recently finished my PhD in Communications at Universidade Nova, Lisbon, Portugal. My PhD is about Erving Goffman's concept of "frame" and its relations to cognition and the formal features of human interaction. Parts of my research have been summarized in an article, "Framing and Cognition", in the book "Goffman's Legacy", published in the US by Rowman & Littlefield. 

At the moment, my research interests include what I call "logotechnics" or "linguistic technologies": the development of systems which reproduce what, according to Noam Chomsky, is the most important characteristic of human language, its "discrete infinity" (the production of an infinite number of structures by the recursive combination of a finite number of elements). 

Each "logotechnique" could be understood as a set of procedures for developing specific kinds of "cognitive artifacts". Writing would be the fundamental "logotechnique", giving rise to printing (its mechanization) and computing (its automatization). I believe a proper understanding of the latter must take into account the effects of the former. For instance, as regards the Internet and the spread of digital media, the so-called "digital revolution" is, in a sense, the process of "generalization of writing" - since, for the first time, almost every form of human representation can be "translated" to digital form through programs written, in the last instance, in binary code. 

I hope this stuff makes sense to you. Anyway, it's still in an earlier phase, open to comments, criticisms and developments. Best regards, 


Luiz Carlos Baptista 
lucabaptista at sapo.pt 
lucabaptista at hotmail.com 



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