Can computers create meaning?

Joe Duffy / Asst. A&C Editor / The USD Vista

We are connected to technology in a way that humanity has never been in the past. Cell phones and laptops are now a part of our daily lives, whether we’re using them to study, work, or scroll through Instagram. We engage with unblinking glass screens, plastic and metal bits, hard drives and motherboards—but is this all computers are?

In the Warren Auditorium on Tuesday, April 16, scholar N. Katherine Hayles gave a lecture entitled “Can Computers Create Meaning?: A Cyber/Bio/Semiotic Perspective.” She argued that computers can, in fact, create meaning. It all just depends on our definition of “meaning.”

The event was part of the Joanne T. Dempsey Lecture Series, created in memory of the late USD English professor of the same name. The biannual series brings literary scholars from around the world to the University of San Diego community.

Professor Koonyong Kim, Ph.D., delivered a short introduction for Hayles, calling her work “trailblazing” and commenting on some of the unique titles of her books—such as “My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts” (2005).

“(Hayles’) work is very different from other leading scholars’ works, where these scholars focus primarily on something intangible and immaterial in the age of cybernetic culture,” Kim said.

Hayles, who currently serves as the the James B. Duke Professor Emerita of Literature at Duke University, is a world-renowned literary critic and theorist whose work brings together literary studies, cultural theory, and contemporary scientific research. Many of her articles and essays engage with postmodern texts by authors like David Foster Wallace, Thomas Pynchon, and Vladimir Nabokov. Her book, “How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics,” won the René Wellek Prize for the Best Book in Literary Theory for 1998-99.

Hayles opened her lecture with some definitions: rather than “thinking,” Hayles instead used the more narrowly defined term “cognition” which, according to her, “…is a process of interpreting information in contexts that connect it with meaning.” She argued that interpretation implies choice, and without choice there is no possibility for interpretation. Her definition of “meaning” arose from the field of biosemiotics—the science of signs for non-human organisms.

“Immediately, if you’re dealing with non-human organisms, meaning has to be seen in a way that extends beyond the linguistic realm, since only humans have verbal language in a symbolic form,” Hayles said. “Consequently, meaning, from a biosemiotics perspective, comes from actions and consequences.”

She used developments in neuroscience—such as the recognition of nonconscious cognition— the physical origins of the universe, and laws of thermodynamics to bolster her argument and draw parallels between the intellectual properties of organic beings and computers. She encouraged the audience to look at meaning-making through a non-human lens, and argued that computers can and do create and understand meanings in this context.

It was especially fascinating when Hayles discussed the meaning that can be found as a result of absence. She claimed that constraints gesture toward what is absent. The basis for sign relations, she said, is something present evoking something absent, like, for instance, a tree shedding its leaves as winter comes—for the tree, the temperature drop has meaning, as it signals an upcoming but absent event.

In her talk, Hayles drew on work from scholars such as Terrence Deacon, C.S. Peirce, and Wendy Wheeler, often expanding on the arguments of these scholars by incorporating a computational perspective. She addressed John Searle’s famous “Chinese Room” thought experiment—wherein, Searle argues, artificial intelligence is unable to truly understand information, only process it—claiming that it’s problematic to use anthropomorphic notions of “meaning” when discussing computers. 

The lecture was followed by a reception in the hall outside the Warren Auditorium. Some professors stayed and chatted with Hayles, while other students and visitors helped themselves to the refreshments being served.

Professor Ivan Ortiz, Ph. D., who served on the organizing committee for the Dempsey Lecture, thought Hayles’ presentation  urged  us  to reconsider our views on conventional language and meaning-making.

“I think it’s really just inviting us to think about the kinds of languages that are circulating and how different sorts of beings can create meaning outside of the semiotic system we have,” Ortiz said. “And I think that’s so difficult for us because we’re so limited by the linguistic systems we’ve developed that we’ve forgotten that so much is happening in our environment that we have no cognition of. In ecosystems, there’s so much language happening, and because we know that there’s so much language happening in natural ecosystems, we have to begin to consider…that there’s a similar kind of ecology in computers.”

USD senior Casey Huang was also in attendance Tuesday night, and said that Hayles’ lecture was thought-provoking in how it managed to shine light on the connections between science and the humanities.  

“I never thought about how physics is so interconnected to the argument that a computer could create meaning,” Huang said. “Like, I didn’t expect the talk to be so scientific but it was cool to learn even if it was hard to understand. I also liked how she pointed out that meaning is mostly an anthropocentric idea, so we should reframe our thoughts in order to see other possibilities.”

The night made the audience question the world around us, and how much of it we are really capable of understanding. After listening to Hayles, it’s difficult to continue viewing computers as mere machines. As we evolve, so do computers, and thus our relationship with technology is constantly changing. The question remains as to what this relationship will look like in the future, and how we will navigate the cybernetic path set before us.