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paths as blends - anthropogenic change

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Some vintage writing from me that gets at some ideas in "distributed cognition".  While this isn't strictly "phatic" it seems like something closely adjacent.

Figure 3 presents a simple illustration of the idea: a path is traced out as a blend of several forces. Commenting on a similar image, Andersen [1] writes that the basic metaphor for thinking is travel. But rather than considering a simple path between obstacles, we might envisage a skier descending amongst moguls. Through continued use, the landscape shifts, and the classifications of paths in terms of their homotopic features or their desirability may change. The “relations between relations” [2] that define semiotic systems can be hooked together and react back on themselves, as our representations, relations, and the world we live in evolve over time.

References are:

[1] ANDERSEN , P. B. Dynamic semiotics. Semiotica 139, 1/4 (2002), 161–210.

[2] KOCKELMAN , P. Biosemiosis, technocognition, and sociogenesis: Selection and significance in a multiverse of sieving and serendipity. Current Anthropology 52, 5 (2011), 711–739.


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