SEMIOTIC PARADOX OF THE NEW MEDIA: 5 EXPERIENCING TRANSPARENT REALITY IN A TRANSMODERN WORLD

Farouk Y. Seif Antioch University Seattle

1. The New Media and the Transmodern World

The new media have brought more profound changes to social, cultur-al, economic, and political systems than human beings have ever expe-rienced before. Computers, the Intemet, e-mail, mobile/smart phones, virtual games, and digital photos are the artifacts of the new media. Although most of these artifacts have been around for nearly three decades, we still put them within the domain of "new" media tech-nologies, which have pervaded all aspects of our life. There still are amazing, almost magical aspects of the new media, and predicaments arising from them, that seem to raise some fundamental questions for contemporary digital cultures. What is the purpose of the new media? How do we deal with their unintended consequences and contradic-tions? And how do we use the new media to initiate and lead mean-ingful social and cultural change or to maintain cultural heritages?

It has been observed that the new media have a remarkable capac-ity to transform, for better or worse, all aspects of social life—the way we think, leam, work, and play. And consequently, they have generat-ed a mixture of reactions: both critical, in the form of a dystopian view-point, and enthusiastic, in the form of Utopian optimism. Digital tech-nologies—the powerful engines behind the new media—^have brought contradictory viewpoints, controversial consequences, and ambivalent feelings to contemporary cultures. Consequently, the new media seem to be a double-edge sword.

On the one hand, driven by unparalleled speed and persuasive broad applications, the new media have made it possible for vast improvements in human communication and even have enhanced human cognition. In fact, the new media have gone much beyond the vision of a "global village" (McLuhan 1962), where people used to be tuned in through common spectacles, into the actual engagement of people in interactive events around the world. And now, "the media are not a stage where something is played, they are a strip, a track, a perforated map of which we are no longer even spectators: receivers" (Baudrillard 1994: 160). Media technologies have also made it possible

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for global exchanges of information, freedom of expression, the unprecedented sphere of choices, and the potential for democratization

and liberation.! In other words, the new media have made a radical shift from one-way mass communication toward interactive communi-cation, from linear time and localized space to a cyclical and reversible space-time reality. This shift has led Utopian technologists to believe that the new media have the capacity to solve all social problems.

On the other hand, the new media have created a cyberspace world, sequestered from the reality that we have been accustomed to experi-encing. The spread of the new media has made it clear that we live in a globalizing and shrinking world, which has contributed to the homog-enization of cultures, marginalization of ethnic communities, flattening of environments and what Edward Relph (1976) calls "placelessness." It seems that "the media transform place and space in such a way that what had been regarded as the locus of the everyday can no longer be distinguished as separate from its opposite" (Poster 2006: 211). The World Wide Web has grown to be the new global town-hall meeting, where conversations determine the fates of nations and corporations. The new digital technology lends itself to "guerilla tactics", such as the rapid spread of unconfirmed reports and leaked confidential docu-ments (Kanter 2001; Seif 2010). The new media technologies have also brought a moral dilemma: how to protect underage and youngsters from inappropriate content and from Internet predators and parasites. In addition, the new media have been viewed as self-referential (Nöth 1997, 2007) as they communicate with and within themselves; and worse yet, "The boundaries of the human and the inhuman are indeed blurring, yet they are doing so in a movement not towards super-human, but towards the subhuman, toward a disappearance of the very symboUc characteristics of the species (Baudrillard 1992: 95).

Interestingly, the so-called "new media" utilizes both old and new technologies, bringing a hyper integration of the visual, virtual, and vis-ceral in a manner that appears to exist outside the known experience of physical and objective reality. The difference between the old media and the new ones seems to have been exaggerated in order to make a distinction between modernity and postmodemity. However, observ-ing current world events and cultural experiences, we might declare.

There has been much debate over the ambiguous role of social media tech-nologies in realizing social, cultural, and political change in the Egyptian Uprising and the Arab Spring as a whole. Interestingly despite the fact that only about 20% of the Egyptian population has Intemet access, nonetheless, this was enough for small groups to mobilize the entire Egyptian society and to help making Egyptian grievances more urgent and difficult to ignore— such is the power of media tools and techniques.

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with David Harvey (1989), that modern and postmodern eras seem to have become simply historical records of the past. The new media have definitely also highlighted the characteristics of our new age, the world of transmodemity 2

Clearly, postmodernity has been going through a subtle evolution, gradually dissolving itself into something different (Harvey 1989). And due to the constant influence of media technologies, the shift from post-modernity to transmodemity seems not to be too striking. This subtle-ty may have encouraged many scholars to claim that we are still living in a postmodern epoch, where postmodemity seems like a convenient catchall for amalgamation in which anything can be labeled postmod-ern. Others do not make a distinction between postmodemity and transmodemity, claiming that transmodem thought that developed from modemism is a variant of postmodernity (Seif 2010).

Unequivocally, transmodemity transcends the concept of post-

modernity.3 As Dussel (2012) pronounces, postmodemity represents a final moment of the five-centuries-old development of modernity, or we may consider it as a natural conclusion of modernity. We cannot dis-agree with David Harvey that "there is much more continuity than dif-ference between the broad history of modernism and the movement called postmodernism" (1989:116). And yet, transmodemity allows the integration of premodernity, modernity, and postmodemity (Seif 2010); and this integration has a profound impact on how we perceive and experience the paradoxical reality expressed by the new media.

Transparency (seeing through and beyond), as the hallmark of transmodemity, echoes the notion of "diaphanous perception" uttered by the Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser (1949). That is why transmoder-nity resonates with Gebser's notion of "aperspectival consciousness". Both DusseTs transmodemity and Gebser's aperspectival conscious-ness share the same quality of transparency, which is at the heart of semiotic consciousness. I believe this idea of transparency is particular-ly significant in understanding and dealing with the semiotic paradox-es of the new media.

Since Gebser's aperspectival consciousness is concerned with diaphanous perception of the whole, such consciousness cannot disre-gard the characteristics of simultaneity and reciprocal perception that

The term transmodemity was coined by the Latin American philosopher Enrique Dussel, who in 1985 introduced the idea of transmodemity as a philo-sophical and social movement, in his work Philosophy of Liberation. Dussel's vision was to transcend modernity and postmodemity, as a call for social change—for de-alienation, demarginalization, and decolonization. What catches our attention in the term transmodemity is the prefix "trans," which comes from the Latin across, means beyond and through— in short, transparency (see Seif 2010).

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go beyond cognitive bomrdaries and space-time limitations. Therefore, whereas the self-reference of the new media has been observed as a characteristic of postmodernism (Nöth 2007), transparency is certainly viewed as a characteristic of transmodemism. Although this transpar-ent quality of transmodemity seems to be implicit, it is behind the cog-nitive revolution, mutual interconnectivity, and cultural metamorpho-sis that we experience today.

Throughout recorded history, new technologies and unfamiliar thoughts have always created uneasiness for familiar cultural patterns of conduct. Undoubtedly, modernity brought on the quandary of visu¬al reality and the reductive biological necessity mediated by the Gutenberg galaxy, and postmodernity witnessed the predicament of pastiches and simulacra of the virtual revolution, expressed by the McLuhan galaxy. And in transmodemity, we seem to face the challenge of visceral and interactive reality that is a transcendental and intercon-nected whole triggered by the Microsoft galaxy (cf. Rodriguez Magda 2008). But since this transmodern world seems to be inclusive of moder-nity and postmodernity, as noted earlier, it seems reasonable for us to consider the most powerful characteristic of transmodemity, trans-parency, to allow for the indivisibility of the visual, the virtual, and the visceral. I shall return to this formulation later.

2. The Paradoxes and Antinomies of the New Media

There has been, and always will be, a challenge for any society in con-fronting new technology. Both advanced technologies and traditional means of doing things hold polarities of positive and negative out-comes (Pool 1983; Seif 2010). More challenging is the fact that, by utiliz-ing different modalities of the visual, virtual, and visceral, the new media have brought a great deal of ambiguity and uncertainty to con-temporary societies, conditioning them to confuse problems with para-doxes. Consequently, in dealing with new media technologies, people have adopted a problem-solving mode, hoping to get whatever is nec-essary done or fixed in a hurry. But the very nature of the new media is not problematic; it is paradoxical.

Considering the need for critical analysis and media literacy (Gaines 2010), it is imperative to make a distinction between a problem and a paradox and to be able to respond appropriately to each of them (Böhm 1996). To take media literacy further, it would be more reward-ing and promising to explore what the new media generate as para-doxes triggered by unfamiliar tools and techniques, rather than taking one side of the debate as positive or negative in terms of experiences and outcomes. The promise of paradoxes is, as Parker J. Palmer puts it, "the promise that apparent opposites[...]can cohere in our lives, the promise that if we replace either-or with both-and, our lives will

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become larger and more filled with light. It is a promise at the heart of every wisdom tradition I know (2008: xxix).

All things considered, little seems to be understood about the wis-dom tradition of paradoxes, which I believe are intrinsic to the new media and generally to the human condition. But before discussing paradoxes, let me first draw a distinction between paradoxes and prob-lems. Often, when societies face crises or are challenged by new tech-nology, there is a tendency to confuse paradoxical situations with prob-lems. In fact, as David Böhm says, "as long as a paradox is treated as a problem, it can never be dissolved" (1996: 63). If we treat a paradox as if it were a problem requires a solution, we end up in more muddled problems. In discussing the paradoxes of the new media, I will draw parallels comparing four paradoxical poles: first, the real and the true; second, the visual and the virtual; third, reality and hyperreality; and forth, technology and teleology.

2.1. The Paradox of the "Real" and the "True"

Our language dominates our perception of "reality" and our descrip-tion of what is real and true. And since the seventeenth century, our sense of reality seems to have not changed: we view reality as a natur-al world independent of the human mind and distinct from the observ-able (Deely 2002). The "real" and the "true" are, for the most part, inclu-sive. However, in order to discuss the paradox of the real and the true, it is first necessary to be aware of the peculiar distinction between them. Perhaps ignoring this distinction leads one astray, considering the new media as a problem rather than a paradox.

Overlooking the subtle difference between llie true and the real is the source of all confusion in experiencing and critically assessing the new media. Where the true depends on factual information, the real relies on multiple interpretations. And where the true is generally char-acterized by descriptive explanation of that which already exists as tools and techniques, the real is distinguished by prescriptive composi-tion of that which could be created or innovated. Technological tools and techniques are true, but human experience of the new media is real.

Digital technologies, the new media's foundations, depend on physical and natural sciences, which value rationality, neutrality, and a concern for the true; whereas the meaning and significance, of which technology is being used for, value interpretation, imagination, and a concem for the real. Basically, sciences are concerned with how things are and deal primarily with what is true or factual. The right or true answer is always the outcome of rational thought and systematic scien-tific research. Perhaps the right or tme answer works well for the phys-ical world and technological tools, but it is extremely limiting in socio-cultural study and can even mislead human beings in appraising their

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experience of the new media. Yet, the concept of simulacrum challenges the subtle difference

between the real and the false, between the real and the imaginary (Baudrillard 1994; Eco 1986). In Disneyland, for instance, illusions and phantasms play a significant role in concealing the reality of what we see. Likewise, in the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, the real is concealed: the pyramid shape hotel and the sphinx are simulacra of the true Sphinx and Pyramid of Egypt. Jean Baudrillard (1994) argues that there is no such thing as reality. For him, simulacrum is not a copy or simulation of the real; rather the reality of simulacrum becomes true in its own right. However, it is more appropriate to say that the new media have integrated the acute boundaries between the real and the true.

And yet, things can get a Uttle murky. Take for example, the Ramses II temple complex, known as Abu Simbel, in Aswan, Egypt. The original monument was built in the 13* ^ century BC. But because of the construction of the High Dam in the 1960s, the monument was relo-cated to higher ground to avoid its destruction by Lake Nasser. One could consider that the temple at the original location is true and that the temple in the new location is real.

This is a case where the mind forms transparent relations between the real and the true—that is to say that the real and the true become

isomorphic.4 There is no absolute reality or truth. Paradoxically, the real can become true as much as the true can turn out to be real. Ironically, if human perception of the reality of the 15* century were always true, Christopher Columbus would have fallen off the edge of the flat Earth. The paradox of the real and the true may have been the trigger for Columbus's imaginative interpretation, which transcended the known visual reality into an unknown virtual reality.

2.2. The Paradox of the Visual and the Virtual

When Marshall McLuhan (1964) defines the media as the technologies that create extension of our body, mind, and senses, he hints at media technologies that stimulate virtual social interactions that occur any-where and any time. Visual reality is sensory, constructed from geo-metric and dynamic information available to human senses. But senso-ry perception is integrated into a larger whole of experience where the

The idea of isomorphic relations between the real and the tme seems to echo John Deely's assertion "...that relations may result either from the mind or from nature [physical environment], and many relations arising from the one source may be so transposed in their foundations as to exist also from the other source" (2002: 94). And through the relations that the mind creates, these rela-tions "may often be transferred into the physical or the cultural environment through an appropriate control over material conditions" (2002: 95).

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perceiving mind transcends the physical surroundings (Deely 2002). And this sensory perception of physical objects is not unlike the per-ception of virtual and physical reality. Virtual characteristics of a real space are always represented on the two-dimensional surface of what we see, whether in paintings or on computer screens. In this sense, a visual space can only be represented virtually—we always encounter simultaneously virtual space in a real space (Summers 2003).

Interestingly, there is an age-old reciprocity between visuality and virtuality where the real and the unreal are no longer opposed or seen as a duality. However, this ever-present reciprocity between the visual and virtual seems to have escaped the attention of contemporary soci-eties. In their efforts to deal with the paradox of the visual and the vir-tual, ancient Egyptians adopted an esoteric and ubiquitous strategy of revealing much more than one could see. Take, for example, the Egyptian canonical tradition of paintings and two-dimensional carv-ings in which the visual elements are organized by the virtual coordi-nates—e.g., the hand of equal width (Davis 1990; Summers 2003). The Egyptians seem also to have virtualized the space-time parameters by replicating visual elements in non-perspectival (aperspectival) effects, which could only be possible through transparent perception and para-doxical thinking. In this visual-virtual coordinate framework, space is not reduced, nor is time ignored. Rather, the diminution of space and time are modeled imaginatively.

Moreover, surrealistic paintings express imaginatively the illusions of our senses, and reject the assumption that the realities of space and time are rigid or absolute. For instance, Salvador Dali's painting The Persistence of Memory represents visual time and space as a fluid virtual reality, and Rene Magritte's Carte Blanche integrates the visual and vir-tual space. Surrealists believe that there is a phenomenological truth that is revealed by our subconscious minds which transcends everyday reality by reframing spatial and temporal limitations; or one might say that, through semiotic representations, the absolute space and time are becoming obsolete.

Much of what we perceive as familiar visual (actual) interpersonal communication (e.g., traditional face-to-face interaction) shares the same aspects as the unfamiliar new media of cyberspace. The unfamil-iar becomes familiar with the passage of time. Virtual reality has caught public attention for its capacity to add a new kind of human-machine interface. Virtual reality has provided sensational experiences in imag-ining physical objects and visual environments. Paradoxically, the vir-tual is, in fact, complementary to the visual.

Integrating the two seemingly paradoxical poles of visuahty and virtuality in the new media can only be achieved through diaphanous perception. The visual images on the Internet are "virtual" in the sense that they can only be perceived sensory through numerous transforma-

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tions they go through as people copy and modify them. In the new media, images appear in a diminution of space and time, where humans and digital apparatus intertwine in visual and virtual constel-lations of imaginative experiences. It is not surprising that through the semiotic configuration of space and time, the new technologies have offered a reality that has become the hyperreal transcendental reality. This hyperreal and transcendental reality transcends the division between what exists in physical reality and what exists in the activity of the mind (cf. Deely 2002). This transcendence leads us to the paradox of reality and hyperreality.

2.3. The Paradox of Reality and Hyperreality

What do we mean by hyperreality? And where do hyperreality's roots come from? Basically, hyperreality describes the inability of humans to distinguish the physical and known reality from the unfamiliar and simulated reality in a world of multitude of modalities. Many critics of the new media technologies believe that the real world seems to be replaced by images that make themselves the epitome of reality, where the new media technologies are viewed as a factitious god, making its own rules and aims for nothing but itself—that is, self-referential. And whenever the real world is distorted into mere images, these images become real beings, a kind of self-motivated figment for hypnotic behavior (Debord 1967). But this criticism belongs to time past.

In his observation of the hyperreal Disneyland, Umberto Eco claims that not only do we enjoy a perfect imitation, "we also enjoy the conviction that imitation has reached its apex and afterwards reality will always be inferior to it" (1986: 46). In fact, Jean Baudrillard, who was influenced by Marshall McLuhan, has questioned if anything is truly real in the age of new media. Baudrillard (1994) has argued that electronic media in the new space-time framework create a hyperreal world, where the new constructed objects are no longer copies or sim-ulacra—they have no originals. According to Baudrillard, while the real is what can be replicated, the hyperreal is what has already been repro-duced. For him, hyperreality is the only reality there is—the real is dead, or never existed. This contradicts the Heideggerian notion of Dasein as being-in-the-world (Heidegger 1927). However, by viewing reality as hyperreality, human beings are being-in-the-world and are also free to produce the reality they desire—or as Rodriguez Magda (2008) suggests, that human beings are becoming cyborgs proclaiming the epoch of "transhumanism".

It has been suggested that more and more people in the transmod-ern world are becoming increasingly engaged with hyperreality, where media images, the Internet, and computer games are taking people out of the real world more frequently and for longer periods of time than

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ever before. It has also been claimed that the entire Western culture is hyperreality, but this claim is inaccurate. This claim comes back to the question: Where do hyperreality's roots come from? For one thing, the fundamental nature of hyperreality is essentially an age-old phenome-non—one can argue that hyperreality has been around since primordial times. Take, for example, the prehistoric cave paintings, which were representations of imaginative thinking and magical enactment intend-ed to create hyperreality to influence the reality of future hunting.

Another example to illustrate how something real can be blended with the imagined is the Egyptian Ankh, "The Key of Life". The Ankh sign represents the crossing act between two great natural phenomena: the path of the sun and the flow of the Nile. Hence, all cultural practices and people's daily conduct have been integrated and organized. The physical reality of the Ankh and the hyperreality^ of what it stands for—

nature and culture—are intertwined.^ In addition, this paradoxical rela-tionship between reality and hyperreality provokes believability in the interrelation between natural and cultural phenomena expressed trans-parently in remarkable art and architecture, which coalesced both the physical "form" and its "idea", enabling the ancient Egyptian mind to transmit and comprehend abstract metaphysical concepts.

Hyperreality is not unreal, but quite the opposite; it is, one might say, a generous semiotic realization of the real, which again, according to Baudrillard (1994), is more real than the real itself. Even in this simu-lated transparency, God himself "has become hyperreal" (Baudrillard 1994: 159). Ontologically, the world has been, and forever will be, woven out of the constant integration of reality and hyperreality. It is unjustifiable to claim that either side of this polarity takes precedence over the other. This paradoxical understanding makes sense of the ever-lasting tension between reality and hyperrealit)^ Is technology then a means to an end or is it an end in itself? These tricky questions lead us to the forth and most important paradox—technology and teleology.

2.4. The Paradox of Technology and Teleology

New media technologies seem to have created many predicaments for human beings. As noted earlier, media technologies have been blamed for homogenization of culture, exploitation of nature, degradation of moral values, loneliness, and even ugliness. But this is an unfair accu-sation and unfounded blameworthiness. And again, viewing technolo-gy as a mere problem to be solved creates more messes. Actually, per-

lt was John Poinsot who first articulated what "cultural phenomena and nat-ural phenomena have in common as semiotic signs" (Deely 2002: 19)—an articulation that has been overlooked for centuries.

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ceiving the paradoxes of the real and the true, visual and virtual, reali-ty and hyperreality as problems to be solved has triggered an intractable conflict between technological needs and human values. To deal with this difficult conflict by abandoning technology would be a preposterous suggestion. The way to meaningfully deal with this con-flict is to melt away the self-imposed barriers of dualistic thought that prevent the transparency between technique and purpose—technology and teleology.

It has been observed that contemporary societies have a tendency to regard technical knowledge as superior to practical wisdom. It is thus not a surprise to extrapolate that this tendency has driven much of our understanding and evaluation of the new media. The infatuation and obsession with the idea of technique, and the lure of novelty (Dunne 1993) for its own sake, encourage a predetermined technologi-cal action without awareness of the unfolding teleological process. But digital tools and techniques of the new media are not autonomous objects and methods serving nothing but themselves. The challenge is how to take advantage of these tools and techniques by channeling their use into creating meaningful innovation (Ronchi 2009).

Transmodern cultures need to overcome the tenuous trap of dual-ism by paying close attention to the notion of teleology. Our efforts in dealing with the new media depend on our ability to acquire a deep understanding of sense of purpose. We need to develop a clear under-standing of the appropriate distinctions and implicit connections between means and ends, between techne and teleos. More specifically, we need to recognize and appreciate the paradoxical phenomena of the techne and teleos—they partly coincide.

Seeking change for mere novelty as an expression of social engi-neering has led many digital technologists to believe that technology offers solutions to all social problems. But being aware of the trans-parency between techne and teleos can lead contemporary societies to experience life in the analog (whole) mode while living in the digital

age.6 One can only hope that the widespread use of digital technolo-gy—with mindfulness and contemplative reflection throughout the conceptualization and implementation processes—can reveal a clear intention that promotes a sustainable way of life.

We can view the technology of the new media as a means to an end.

What I mean by analog mode is that experience within which things and events are simultaneous and seamless. Unlike the digital mode, which repre-sents the complexity of life by breaking information down into discrete bits or packets to be easily compacted, stored, and mass-produced, the analog mode consists of direct representational or analogous systems of the undifferentiat-ed whole of human experience (see Seif 2007, 2010).

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where the means and the end reciprocate purposefully in an integrative circularity. Yet, at the same time, we need to feel comfortable with the paradoxical and tensional relationship between techne and teleos. This relationship can bring forward a sustainable and desirable future that transforms reality into a transparent experience that would also make transmodem cultures survive and thrive. To initiate an action for a technological invention, one must be clear about its motivating inten-tion, while keeping in mind that this intention does not necessarily mean arriving at a particular destination—for intention conveys a ten-dency to move toward attraction and desire. In this sense, as I have said elsewhere (Seif 2010), teleology is not the point of departure, nor is tech-nology the destination of our making.

Our capacity to steadily and relentlessly pursue paradoxical com-plexity is more than an intellectual skill for holding tensional antino-mies between the two opposite poles of reality—it requires "cunning intelligence" (Detienne and Vernant 1991), or what ancient Egyptians once conceived as the "inteUigence of the heart" (Seif 1990, 2005, 2010). This intelligence is a life skill for holding complex and paradoxical experiences. If we lack the capacity to let these antinomies of the new media segue into paradoxes, a "both-and" that has the potential to open our minds and hearts to something new and unexpected, "we will most likely fall back on our hard-wired 'fight or flight' response" (Palmer 2008: xxx). The four paradoxes described above require the skills of transparent perception and transmodern thinking that have the capaci-ty to steadily and relentlessly pursue their dynamics through imagina-tive interpretation of the new media.

3. The Indivisible Triad of Visual-Virtual-Visceral

So far, I have managed to avoid the trap of "eittier-or" by categorizing the visual, the virtual, and the visceral. However, now is the time to reveal the transparent relationships among these three different modal-ities. Rather than focusing on the visual, the virtual, and the visceral indi-vidually, it is more appropriate to bring into focus the interrelations among them. As mentioned earlier, when Marshall McLuhan (1964) declares, "the medium is the message," he conceives the medium as an extension of our bodies, minds, and senses within which different real-ities can emerge. McLuhan concludes that when the Gutenbergian human being dies, a new human is bom who perceives the world dif-ferently. The birth of a new type of human seems to have coincided with the beginning of the transmodem world. For the outcome of all our creative thoughts or innovative actions is the new media that we have been experiencing.

One can challenge the cliche that the medium is the message. "The medium is not the message," says Umberto Eco; "the message becomes

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what the receiver makes of it/' by applying it to his/her own codes of reception, which are not of the sender—there will be many possible interpretations of the message (1986: 235). To be sure, some ambiguity has good results in fostering creativity and increasing the freedom of interpretation of the message by the recipient (Eco 1986). This freedom of interpretation echoes Charles Sanders Peirce's extraordinary triadic conception of semiotic signs, where a sign or "representamen" brings

its "object" and its "interpretant" into a continuous relation.^ This semi-otic consciousness of the visual, virtual, and visceral makes our percep-tion of reality utterly open, interpretable, and transparent simply because:

[.. .]the action of signs is indifferent to the physical status of the object signified. And this indifference in turn is possible because the triadic sign-relation participates as a relation in the being peculiar to all rela-tions whereby every relation as such transcends the subjectivity of individual being[...]with all the individual characteristics or traits[...]that distinguish them as subjects of action and interaction or units of objectification, collective or individual. (Deely 2002: 63)

Bearing in mind John Deely's statement, and drawing from Peirce's sign, one can make a case for reality as a triad of visual, virtual, and vis-ceral. In other words, one can consider the transparent relationship of visual-virtual-visceral as an indivisible triad, where the representations of reality are interchangeable on individual and collective levels. Only through integration can the perception of the differences among the visual, virtual, and visceral be transparently revealed. Because this triad of visual, virtual, and visceral is mediated and perceived transparently as a whole, this triadic whole is not fixed but is in constant flowing movement. And this triadic flux cannot be explicitly known but can be perceived implicitly (cf. Böhm 1980).

Hence, the triad of the visual-virtual-visceral is the new emerging reality. For reality, as John Deely puts it, "is not only what is, but also what it will be; and in this becoming we are participants through semi-osis" (1994: 246). And through this semiosis human perception hap-pens, "along with the possibility to manipulate the inner model of 'real-ity'" (Deely 2002: 111). In the transmodern world, we all have the priv-ileges of being not just recipients but contributors and providers of the new technology, recycling and reshaping our reality.

Peirce defines semiotic sign as: "A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. The sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object" (CP 2.228).

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It is through this integration of the visual, virtual, and visceral that human beings—as semiotic animals, who know there are signs and make use of signs (Deely 2002, 2010)—can make the appropriate dis-tinctions between wise use and reckless abuse of the new media. Perhaps this wise use depends on our sensibility in overcoming the self-imposed dualities of the real and the true, reality and hyperreality, visual and virtual, and technology and teleology. This sensibility has the potential to guide us to use the new media in a manner that embod-ies transparent perception of reality within which the semiotic animal is able to experience both mind-dependent and mind-independent aspects of the objective world.

Now, I want to bring back the formulation of the three galaxies noted at the outset. The transmodern world (Microsoft galaxy), which embodies many diaphanous qualities, transcends the visual reality of the modern world (Gutenberg galaxy) and the virtual reality of the post-modern world (McLuhan galaxy) into visceral experiences (Microsoft galaxy). Again, diaphanous perception of the transmodern world, which is inclusive of modernity and postmodernity, does not reject the characteristics of either. Integrating these three galaxies opens the pos-sibility for transmodern cultures to genuinely and meaningfully experi-ence hyperreality.

The new media are capable of not only representing cultural objects and events, but also making it possible to meaningfully modify them. Ironically, when digital tools and techniques modify these cultural objects and events, the new media transform its purpose. And this unlimited process of transformation generates cultural phenomena that are difficult to place under traditional understanding and categories. As a matter of fact, this is the basic dynamic of Peirce's semiotics, which can be perceived as an infinite semiosis through which sign action ren-ders the integration of the visual, virtual, and visceral possible.

4. The Transmodern Challenge: Paradoxes and Perseverance

Undoubtedly, the new media have impacted the way we see and understand cultural objects and events; and consequently, we may need to rethink the nature of reality itself. For it is neither impossible nor undesirable for our technologically advanced society to resurrect cultural practices of the "good old days". An equally valid counterar-gument is that while the new media have a powerful impact on how we perceive cultural objects and events, accepting ongoing changes trig-gered by technological innovation has never been easy, especially since our unpredictable media systems, as Jean Baudrillard describes, "oper-ate both by exponential stabiUty and instabiUty" (1992:113).

The new media that many fear will homogenize or dilute cultures may, in fact, encourage the opposite by serving as a vehicle to give

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voice to local cultures and indigenous populations, preserving their identities and restoring their cultural memories. Recent global events have shown that the new media have been a tool par excellence for social, economic, and political changes. We have the powerful means of digi-tal technologies to mobilize populations and engage in cultural trans-formation; however, this cultural transformation depends on our capac-ity to segue antinomies into paradoxes. While the paradoxical com-plexity of the new media is packed with uncertainties and ambiguities, it is also promising and rewarding. This paradoxical complexity requires perseverance—there is no way around that.

New media technologies and human beings reciprocally shape each other. For the influence of the new media on cultures is neither unavoid-able nor inevitable. In fact, a culture that ignores experimentation with technological innovation is destined to decay over time. Indeed, innov-ative technologies contain the familiar traditional ones, for innovation may be the emergence of something utterly new, but it is also the rekin-dling of something deeply rooted in the past. On the one hand, innova-tion is essential for social systems because technological innovation functions as a negative feedback loop in social systems for adjustment and renewal (Seif 2005). On the other hand, stabiUty and consistency of culture, as a positive feedback loop, are fundamental if society is des-tined to exist. Stability and continuity are needed for meaningful change to be recognized in the first place. The technology of the new media is at the heart of the dynamics of change and continuity.

There are magnificent opportunities for transmodem cultures to begin looking at the familiar in new ways and to notice the unfamiliar that has been ignored. The paradoxical challenge for transmodem cul-tures is to uncover the unfamiUar potential in the legacy of the familiar by perceiving transparency; experiencing reality visually, virtually, and viscerally; and fully engaging in the cosmic dance between the desire for novel technologies and the comfort of hanging on to the traditional ones.

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