Memo24+--+Shifts+in+Sign+Systems

Thomas Solley STSH 4980-01 Senior Thesis Costelloe-Kuehn 10/5/2014 10/8/2014

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__ Memo 24 -- Shifts in Sign Systems __ " For this memo, write a few hundred words describing a critical discursive shift that you think is going on in or around your object of concern. A shift in sign systems is a shift in what is common sensical. Examples are in the reading section: Daniel Botkin and I. Scoones (in separate pieces) describe shifts in conceputalizations of nature; Steven Lansing 's essays asks what it would look like for social scientists to shift to thinking in terms of complex adaptive systems. Gayatri Spivak 's essay reads the work of the South Asian Subaltern Studies collective as charting shifts in sign systems. See Ali Kenner's essay  on a shift in sign systems around asthma care and disease/health more generally."

I don't think I have seen much of any "shifts" in the way hive minds are viewed within the academic and non-academic communities -- as per the Memo23 on Hegemonic Backdrops, most of the systems I have seen described (or using that term) are referencing some "common standard" for what "hive minds" are -- which I have assumed thus far (and have yet to see confirmed in-text) are all based-off of Ray Kurzwheil's AI and uploaded-consciousness theories from the 1980s.

However, the way the PUBLIC views the INTERNET, and cell-phones, has been undergoing very rapid cultural and legal shifts over the past seven years. Individual-privacy advocates have spawned the Net Neutrality debate, as well as placed restrictions on what content can and cannot be used by police when your phone is taken as evidence. In popular culture, a sub-group has been spawned (or risen to prominence in the last few years?) which sees social media as "disruptive" to what they consider to be "healthy" communication -- and similar groups have posited ideas regarding how "the internet has made us dumber," "smart-phones have become a distraction," "we are too dependent on technology," etc. Where these themes came from, I have yet to find -- but I know they will be crucial in understanding the social forces that have shaped the industry of communication since the debut of smartphones in the US.

To clarify, the subjects I see being "shifted" are;
 * how much internet-use is considered "healthy"? (time spent in front of compute screen)
 * texting/"communicating" while driving (has become worse)
 * "personalization"/"humanity" of communication modes (call, text, email, snapchat)

Concerns ... Yep, it's still fucking-up the underlines.

THIS ONE IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, since I'm relying on public opinion on an ever-changing theory dependant on available technology...