Mention the word mediation today, or post it on the Internet.
Swarms of lawyers will come after you. From the many meanings
mediation has acquired over time, dispute resolution is the
practical activity that has appropriated the word. Nevertheless,
in its etymology, mediation attests to experiences that pre-date
lawyers as they pre- date the earliest attempt to introduce laws.
Mediation, along with heuristics, is definitory of the human
species. From all we know, nature is a realm of action and
reaction. The realm of human activity implies a third element,
an in-between, be this a tool, a word, a plan. This applies to
primitive experiences of self-constitution, as well as to
current embedded mediating activities: mediation of mediation ad
infinitum. In each mediation there is the potential for further
mediation. That is, the inserted third can be divided in turn. A
lever used to move a very heavy object can be supplemented by
another one, or two or more, all applied to the task at hand.
Each tool can progressively evolve into a series of tools. Each
individual called upon to mediate can call upon others to
perform a chain of related or unrelated mediations.
The same holds true for signs and language. Mediation is the
practical experience of reducing to manageable size a task that
is beyond the abilities of an individual or individuals
identified through the task. Mediation is a mapping from a
higher scale of complexity to a scale that the persons involved
in a task can handle. This chapter will examine various phases
of mediated human experiences. We shall examine at which
pragmatic junctures language and, subsequently, literacy provide
mediating functions. More important, we will define the
conditions that require mediations for which literacy is no
longer adequate.
Since tools, in their mediating function, will be frequently
brought into the argument, a distinction needs to be made from
the outset: Signs, language, artificial languages, and programs
(for computers and other devices) are all mediating entities.
What distinguishes these from tools is their caoability for
self-replication. They are, as much as humans constituting their
identity in semiotic processes, subject to evolutionary cycles
structurally similar to those of nature. Their evolution is, as
we know, much faster than genetic evolution. The genetic make-up
of the human species has changed relatively little, while the
mediating elements that substantially contributed to the
increase in human efficiency underwent many transformations. Some
of these are no longer evolutionary, but revolutionary, and mark
discontinuities. Genetic continuity is a background for
pragmatic discontinuity. The moments of discontinuity correspond
to threshold values in the scale of human activity. They regard
mediating devices and strategies as dynamic components of the
pragmatic framework.