Artur Matuck

Semion & SemionR

 

This work responds to a need to innovate and reevaluate the semiographic, conceptual, legislative, spiritual work initiated in 1972 with Semion: an international symbol for released information. Twenty-six years later, the principle of information sharing proposed through Semion has gained unprecedented relevance with the implementation of computer networks. Semion's proposition states that: “Any information, text, image, project, method, idea, bearing this symbol can be reproduced, diffused, translated, applied or utilized, provided that the authorship and the source are mentioned, the information is respected in its integrity, and the purpose is not economic exploitation.”

The present work discusses the need to add a new symbol besides Semion. The new symbol will mark those works that can be not only reproduced, diffused, translated, applied or utilized, but also modified, or altered, or changed, so that new information can be derived and created from them. SemionR is an international symbol for re-scriptable information.

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Ewriting

 

Computer-based electronic writing – abbreviated to ewriting – is a developing field of inquiry generating theories and computer applications, that will gradually change our whole perspective on writing.

 

Writing, and therefore thinking, will acquire new tools and will be more entangled with computational language-related processes in their present, emergent and future forms. Ewriting possibilities are unpredictable. We can, however, point some directions.

 

Computing today cannot be isolated from networking. Thus, it is actually the conjunction of computers and telecommunication that will provide for new forms of ewriting technology.

 

Compwriting (abbreviation of computer writing) indicates possible interactions between writing and computational processes, such as text-reprocessing software. 

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Interwriting, an interactive form of cooperative ewriting, indicates writing emerging out of computer network connections among distant human agents.

 

In both forms, material coming from in-site or distant textual databases will interact with ewritten material enriching information processing. Ewriting software design therefore must provide for a writer’s interaction with word- and text-processing software, with other co-writers, and with textual databases.

 

The envisioned technology will allow for integration among different functions providing for automatic data interaction, textual de-construction and re-construction, text-filtering and processing during teleconferencing, and for the interaction of rescriptable data.

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The new ewriting tools will challenge deep-rooted habits and institutions that are at the basis of our language and thought processes. It will determine