First, "N" floats; there is no natural or preferred level for N. EVERY
level can be treated as N. What makes a process at some timescale belong to
"N" is the analyst's choice to put it "in focus", i.e. to mainly want to
answer some questions or gain some understanding about that process and its
associated processes at the same approximate timescale. When we do that,
then the model I am presenting tells us we also have to look at N+1 and N-1
(at least), and the model also suggests the general kinds of material and
semiotic relationships to be expected across levels (and so also suggests
what kinds of N-1 and N+1 processes may be particularly relevant). It poses
a lot of heuristic questions to be answered in the analysis (e.g. How does
N act as a filter or buffer for effects from N-1 to not affect N+1 very
much directly? What kinds of semiotic artifacts are key participants in N+2
timescale processes and also in level N processes, producing heterochronic
linkages? etc.)
Second, _things_ do not define or belong primarily to a level. Only
_processes_ do; only doings and actions which unfold on, or recycle with, a
particular timescale (or within a bounded range of timescales on the same
order of magnitude). Things get pulled into the model indirectly. This is a
view of reality in which process is material, and things are merely
participants in processes, defined by how they participate. This shift is
crucial to the model and it is highly counter-intuitive and at odds with
much of our dominant discourse tradition about materiality, which takes the
(dead) object as the paradigm of material reality. The same applies to
notions of 'systems'; these are not systems which consist of
things-in-interaction, but systems which consist of
processes-in-interaction (coupled, interdependent). Of course they are
processes-with-things, and the things can be critical to couplings between
processes, as in the important case (boundary objects, heterochrony) where
the same object (materially) participates in processes in different
subnetworks of a system or in processes on radically different timescales,
and so is, so far as the process system is concerned, _functionally_ and
_semiotically_ different, but materially 'the same' and in this way the
linkage is produced (just one kind of link, but very important).
As Phil uses 'medium' what he really means, I think, is the whole
technology associated with the medium, including the human
material-semiotic practices (inscribing/meaning), institutions, material
objects, etc. In their nature, at least as we make and use such media, they
are cross-level, heterochronic, providing connections across really big
jumps in timescales (factors of 100, 1000 or more; N to N+2 or higher).
There is clearly also a sense in which these media-cultures do "define
time" for us. Perhaps it would be better to say they "confuse time" for us.
In the presence of heterochrony, the simple space and time of physics
becomes 'tangled' across timescales. The particular logic of entanglement
is different in cultures which predominantly rely on different ways of
using different media, and partly because of the particular affordances of
the material media and technologies for linking particular processes at
particular (radically different) timescales. This view is probably as close
as I'd come to Phil's suggestion that the material technology of the medium
defines time for a culture. (A useful discussion of writing that goes
beyond symbol systems and material media to look at the larger
techno-practice-complex is Roy Harris, Signs of Writing; I recommend it for
the issues it raises, not totally for the solutions it gives. I've also
written a review of the book. Of course a lot of the Latourian work on
inscriptions, as well as Leigh Star on boundary objects, also carries over
explicitly to these concerns.)
JAY.
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JAY L. LEMKE
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATION
CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK
JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU
<http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/education/jlemke/index.htm>
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