Times of the Sign

This short post is the first of hopefully many on life and technology viewed from a personal perspective that reflects my broad interest and experience in studying human and artificial intelligence. The name ThoughtSigns originates with philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, on whose science of signs, or semiotic, I often rely for insight. Peirce's work was further developed most creatively by my friend, the late Gene Pendergraft, who did much to advance the understanding of thought and intelligence in human and machine form. I hope to return to Gene's work here early and often.

The focus of my inquiry and future posts will be intelligence--the ability to reliably achieve satisfaction through action--and how it can be enhanced through changed minds and technology. My motivation is based on a belief that in our present state of humanity we have a great untapped potential to thrive as individuals and as communities by becoming more intelligent. This unfulfilled potential can be in large part traced to the situation, as Gene wrote in his unpublished book "The Future's Voice" (riffing on Thoreau), "that men labor under a mistake, under the inherited idea that they receive rather than create information..."

In future posts I hope to examine current issues and topics of interest in a different light free from this so-called mistake. While the origins of this perspective are abstract and philosophical, the implications are highly practical and immediately relevant to a wide range of contemporary challenges, such as:

• Education and training - how do we help people create knowledge and information rather than "give" it to them through instruction?
• Information technology - how do we create intelligent machines that create information by and for themselves, rather than giving it to them through programming?
• Cultural diversity - how do people create different perspectives and why are they all potentially important in raising mankind's intelligence?
• Work and Management - how do organizations learn and become more intelligent, and therefore sustainably provide high quality products and services?
• Personal technology - how can we augment personal intelligence with technology to help people find satisfaction?

A key step in freeing ourselves from Gene's mistake is accepting the central role of the sign -- something that stands for something else to someone--in our thinking and therefore actions and outcomes. Rather than computing responses to information that we receive, we can be aware of interpreting signs that we, individually and collectively, have created to inform and influence our actions. Although the situation is actually much more complicated, it is not too far off to say that our collective intelligence takes a giant leap forward simply by replacing our instinctive madness for received facts with a conscious acknowledgement of how we create and use signs.

It is therefore my hope that, with whatever part I might play in it, the future will be the Times of the Sign.