Processes of Diffusion in Networks

Posted on Tue 14 December 2010 in Rumination • Tagged with diffusion, information, semiotics, social networks

Social diffusion processes, real and alleged, have been the focus of intense study for many years, reaching into the early days of anthropology. Because so many different things can be thought to diffuse or flow through a population-- culture, ideas, practices, behaviors, technologies and innovations, opinions, commodities, money, influence, diseases …


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Semiotics of Programming Part I

Posted on Fri 24 September 2010 in Rumination • Tagged with programming languages, semiotics

I am reading a fascinating new book by Kumiko Tanaka-Ishii, The Semiotics of Programming published this year by Cambridge University Press. In the book Tanaka-Ishii analyzes the semantics of programming languages from the perspective of Saussurian and Peircian semiotics, that is, as systems of signs. In so doing, Tanaka-Ishii not …


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