ABSTRACT
In the great developments of western culture emphasis has been shifting from the search for meaning to the management of information; there has been an overall move away from the elaboration of integrative goals towards the processing of discrete elements.1 Computation has silently come to be regarded as one of the ruling paradigms, and epistemic commensurability has soared to the highest criterion for the evaluation of a wide variety of issues emerging in our age. Once the ideas of computation, algorithms and commensurability permeate culture at large, a message is only ‘meaningful’ if it reduces alternative choices and minimizes polysemous, connotative or metaphoric components. And this general understanding of meaning may be regarded as one of the main factors enhancing the qualities of incisive lucidity and predictive power of western logic. If we observe a structure through a digital outlook it does in fact appear to us as made up of discrete elements capable of coming together at the highest level of organization. Unequivocal and denotative features are singled out so that messages can be channelled through antecedently established logical sequences approximating the exactitude of a digital language. Such symbolic structures are eminently suited to satisfy our unending search for clarity and univocity even though they often imply a dismissal of deeper connecting dimensions. However limiting, this procedural style is essential to safeguard the consistency of formal and cognitive structures. Highlighting digital ways of operating we can in fact appreciate how distinct elements can indefinitely interact with other elements.
