Sustainability, cognitive technologies and the digital semiosphere

Abstract

The convergence of digital and multimodal cognitive technologies offers the possibility to interact in an ‘on-line’ cultural process mediated by new ways of representing our thoughts, emotions, ideas, beliefs, opinions and behaviours. Such technological integration not only alters and introduces innovations in the interactive and representational modes of networked media, perhaps inducing changes in our cognitive functions, but also conditions the global cultural dynamics by potentially organizing, funnelling, tagging and ‘semantically’ predigesting knowledge through the ‘intelligent’ digital technosphere. The ecology of ideas in such complex and accelerating semiotic space will present highly contradictory and dissonant tendencies in cultural processes. This may pose great difficulties for individuals, communities and whole cultural layers when trying to reconcile such tendencies with a sustainable direction that does not disrupt the life-support systems and the cognitive (and physiological) health of individuals and communities.