Abstract
The essay provides a concise introduction to the epistemological structure of Luhmann’s systems theory and offers a primer to evaluate the conceptual tools it develops to address the problem of how meaning is integrated in a society that is increasingly more complex, and whose complexity is increasingly processed through digital communication. In the modern, functional society described by Luhmann self-reference as a systemic device for maximizing environmental control by maximizing systemic distinctions depends on a communicational structure based on the difference between information, utterance and understanding. But when communication – i.e. society – becomes thoroughly digital, those very “modern” structures of integration seem ineffectual, if not altogether obsolete, to process the difference between utterance/information, because they function within a scale of complexity processing (understanding) that is irreducible to the scale of knowledge generated in the era of the digital media.
Lingua originale | Inglese |
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pagine (da-a) | 133-148 |
Numero di pagine | 16 |
Rivista | SYMPLOKE |
Volume | 28 |
Numero di pubblicazione | (1-2) |
DOI | |
Stato di pubblicazione | Pubblicato - 2020 |
Keywords
- Communication
- Niklas Luhmann
- media