Comparisons of the efficiency of direct human practical
experiences to that of mediated forms-with the aid of tools,
signs, or languages-suggest one preliminary observation: The
efficiency of the action mediated through sign systems is higher
than that of direct action. The source of this increase in
efficiency is the cognitive effort to adapt the proper means
(how work is done) to the end (what is accomplished) pursued. In
retrospect, we understand that this task is of a tall order-it
involves observation, comparison, and the ability to conceive of
alternatives. As we learn from attempts involving the best of
science and the best of technology, the emulation of such
cognitive processes, especially as they evolve over time, is not
yet within our reach.
Language, together with all other sign systems, is an integral
part of the process of constitution and affirmation of human
nature. The role it plays in the process is dynamic. It
corresponds to the different pragmatic contexts in which human
beings project their structural reality into the reality of
their universe of life. The biophysical system within which this
projection took and takes place underwent and still undergoes
major changes. They are reflected in the biophysical reality of
the human being itself. To be part of a changing world and to
observe this change places the human being simultaneously inside
and outside the world: inside as part of it, as a genetic
sequence; outside as its conscience, expressed in all the forms
through which awareness, including that of work, is
externalized.
Whether a very restricted (limited by the pragmatic horizon of
primitive human beings), or a potentially universal system of
expression, representation, and communication, language cannot
be conceived independent of human nature. Neither can it be
conceived independent of other means of expression,
representation, and communication. The necessity of language is
reflected in the degree to which evolutionary determination and
self-determination of the individual or of society, correlate.
Language is constituted in human practical experiences. At the
same time, it is constitutive, together with many other elements
of human praxis: biological endowment, heuristics and logic,
dialectic, training. This applies to the most primitive elements
of language we can conceive of, as well as to today's productive
languages. Embodied in literacy, language accounts for the
ever-deepening specialization and fragmentation of human praxis.
The replacement of the literate use of language by the
illiteracy of the many languages dismissing it in work, market
transactions, and even social life is the process to which we
are at the same time witnesses and agents of change.
Sign systems of all kinds, but primarily language, housed and
stored many of the projects that changed the condition of
praxis. The major changes are: from direct to mediated, from
sequential to parallel, from centralized to decentralized, from
clustered (in productive units such as factories) to
distributed, from dualistic (right or wrong) to multi-valued
(along the continuum of acceptable engineering solutions), from
deterministic to non-deterministic and chaotic, from closed (once
a product is produced, the problem-solving cycle is completed)
to open (human practical experiences are viewed as problem
generating), from linear to non-linear. Each of these changes, in
turn, made the structural limits of language more and more
evident. Practical experiences in the design of languages, in
particular the new languages of visualization, are pushing these
limits in order to accommodate new expectations, such as
increased expressiveness, higher processing speed,
inter-operability-an image can trigger further operations.
Globality of human practical experience succeeds against the
background of the emergence of many languages that are very
specific, though global in scope in that they can be applied all
over the world. The chip factory already mentioned-or, for that
matter, an integrated pizza or hamburger production facility-can
be delivered turn-key in any corner of the world. The languages
of mathematics, of engineering, or of genetics might
independently be characterized by the same sequentiality,
dualism, centralism, determinism that made natural language
itself incapable of handling complexities resulting from the new
scale of human activity. Once integrated in practical
experiences of a different nature, such as those of automation,
they all allow for a new dynamics. Obviously, they are less
expressive than language-we have yet to read a DNA sequence
poem, or listen to the music of a mathematical formula-but
infinitely more precise.