Glossary

Daniel Faltesek

Glossary

Abduction: A process of logical reason that proceeds from probabilistic principles, allowing for speculative arguments. Abduction is often misidentified as deductive reasoning.
Absorption: The degree to which a surface absorbs energy from a wave bouncing off it.
Abstraction: Resignification of a sign or system of signs to one that is less concrete, more inclusive.
Accelerationism: A loose academic cluster that challenges the conservative orientation of the dominant thread of critical/cultural studies as they rely on a vision of what has been lost. This approach to theorizing inverts value hierarchies and dismisses academic fatalism.
Aesthetics: Principles associated with the appreciation of beauty.
Affect: The sensual experience of communication.
Affordance: The technical capacity of a thing or system, perceived or not.
Agency: The capacity for individuals to make decisions.
Agent-based model: An approach to simulation that produces individual software robots that interact. These models allow a view into the evolution of social structures.
Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank: A 9-0 decision of the US Supreme Court, with the majority opinion written by Clarence Thomas. The key holding for this case is that simply adding a computer to an existing business process does not make that business process patentable.
Alterity: The consideration of all the meanings that could have been in any given situation.
AM: Short for amplitude modulation, AM is an encoding system for typically analog information on a single wavelength.
Amazon: A large corporation active in multiple domains of commerce, including retail and information services.
Anaglyph: A stereoptical system that uses colored filters to selectively deliver a video signal to each eye of a viewer.
Ancestor simulation: A conjecture that advanced societies would use their massive computing power to build full, vivacious simulations of ancestor civilizations. In science today, this is an example of an agent-based model.
Antifragility: A position within a system that may benefit from instability or the destruction of that system. In political theory, this is also known as a preference for the exit option. Generally, we assume that participants in a system are interested in the preservation of that system; inverting this assumption can be useful.
Anti-vax: A person or public holding the view that vaccination is counterproductive. Typically used as an example of an error in reasoning.
API: Short for application programming interface, API the logistical element of an application system
Argument: A special discourse that concerns the attempt to resolve a disagreement. These can be directed toward either a dialectical or a rhetorical resolution. In the dialectical mode, a specialized judge will adjudicate the claims at hand. In the rhetorical mode, the discourse is designed to persuade an audience that will determine the truth.
Artificial intelligence: The idea that a computer system provides a high level of symbolic output akin to human thought. There are two versions of AI. Weak systems simulate human thought. Strong systems think like people.
Artificial scarcity: Most media goods are non-rivalrous yet excludable. This means that there is no reason why an infinite number of copies of the text could not be produced. Often technical means (anti-piracy software) and legal means (copyright or patent law) are used to make a good artificially scarce, supporting the price.
Assortment: Retail stores follow a programmatic logic. The space of a retail store is limited, requiring careful planning and decisions between mutually exclusive outcomes.
Attention: Referring to processes where individuals focus on a particular thing.
Autopoiesis: Systems that automatically produce text. Autopoietic systems are not autotelic (meaning they don’t call themselves into existence). We can judge the quality of the assumptions in autopoietic systems.
Autotelic: A self-creating system.
Axiology: The study of systems of value. Values are inevitable—there is no system of thinking that does not find some things to be better, more important, or more valuable than others. This is a critical area, as many people fail to critique the basis of their value systems or assume that other people will come to share their perspectives.
Bandwidth: Within a rivalrous pool of a resource, bandwidth is the conception of the allocation of a quantity of that whole.
Barbershop quartet: A group of harmonious singers who produce a range of tones beyond those produced by the four singers.
Bayesian methods: Bayesian approaches to research differ in that they do not focus on the rejection of the null hypothesis, but the evaluation of the relative probability of an event given the inclusion of new information. This method calls for the rigorous production of an anterior probability or prior, which is then changed, which is expressed as an effect size. The Bayesian moment represents a movement beyond binary conceptions of significance and a more complex discussion of the existing literature.
Beauty: Qualities that are aesthetically satisfying. This is a phenomenological loop.
Bell Labs: Facilities in New Jersey where many critical innovations were developed, primarily a result of the telephone monopoly.
Benjamin: Walter Benjamin, author most notably of The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction and The Arcades Project. Both are highly influential in the study of media, as they situate media technologies and people in complex relationships, especially with varying senses of time. Benjamin is also well loved for producing a dialectical, rather than allegorical, media history.
Big data: A popular term for the use of computers with very large datasets. This does not refer to a new selection of statistical techniques, but the capacity to do things at scale.
Black swan: An event that is seemingly unpredictable but likely was foreseeable with a broader political view. Within author Nassim Taleb’s context, these tend to be events for which there were multiple layers of probable protection that failed.
Brain interfaces: Interfaces that would at least read the thoughts of a user if not input thoughts into their brain by means other than the senses.
Brutalism: An approach to design that emphasizes the conditions of possibility for large structures, including untreated concreate and metallic elements.
Californian ideology: The fiction that California is a special place away from the government where innovation happens. This fantasy disavows the role of the state in producing technology.
Camera: Any technology that records an image. This could include traditional film, digital, and synthetic cameras.
CCD: Short for charge-coupled device, CCDs were used in early electronic news-gathering cameras. A digital sensor is used when extremely high-quality images are needed, such as in supercooled cameras.
Central tendency: The middle of a selection of values, typically mean, median, and mode.
Civil law: A code-driven legal system utilized in Europe. Emphasizes a clearly written law with less interpretive flexibility.
CMOS: Short for complimentary-metal-oxide semiconductor, a CMOS is a digital sensor produced at a lower cost with superior processing design.
CMYK: Short for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, CMYK is a color space typically used to assign colors for printing.. Other colors can be included as well, typically orange or green, depending on the system. More simplistic color spaces could be produced that rely on a Pantone.
Cochlea: The part of the inner ear where sound waves are translated into a neural signal by hair cells.
Codec: The method for encoding video information for reproduction as a display or further editing.
Codes: The condensation of many signs in relationship. Signs within codes continuously redefine each other.
Collective intelligence: The prospect that large groups of people might organize their cognitive capacity to produce meaningful activity.
Color: The resulting perception of sensations of the color of an object by a photoreceptor. Philosophy has many rich discussions of color; unfortunately, these are less interesting for communication.
Coloring book hypothesis: The incorrect assumption that the brain primarily renders the world in black and white (like a coloring book), which then is filled in with color. Simultaneous processing is a better model, and it also explains several optical illusions.
Common carrier: Carriers who provide a basic transportation or communication service on a fixed fee schedule regardless of other properties of the thing to be conveyed.
Common law: The hermeneutic tradition of a number of legal procedures that have been in operation for several centuries.
Complex: A system with many parts.
Complicated: A design or experience that either does not align with the expectations of the user or tends to be associated with negative emotions.
Conditions of possibility: Facts that must be true to produce the present.
Cones: A set of photoreceptors that typically function in higher-light conditions, producing a wider gamut of colors.
Conflict: The model where social systems change due to disagreement between groups.
Constitutive: A term that organizes the discourse around a particular thing.
Conspiracy: A discourse featuring an ostensibly repressed truth that has been dampened by a villain. Once the block of the villain is removed, the new information will change society.
Continuity: The idea that the past continues. Continuity is the opposite of rupture.
Continuous: On the smallest level, a number is always immediately next to another number on a line. The difference between these numbers is only decided at the level of the problem. This idea is similar to the arrow paradox: if an arrow at any given moment is half as far from the target as it was at the prior moment, will it ever arrive?
Convergence: The transformative potential of the intentional connection of systems or ideas.
Copyright: A legal regime protecting the expression of authors. Authors in this case are broadly defined. Copyright protects expressions and possible derivative works, not the idea itself.
Counter-publics: Much like publics, these are imaginary alignments of people who suppose they are being spoken to, but that these are not directly tied to the primary alignment of the social structure described.
Creative destruction: As described by Joseph Schumpeter, economic systems are zero-sum, meaning that often the destruction of one form opens space for a new one.
Critical legal studies: An approach to the study of law that emphasizes the discursive element of the law, particular the role of power, rhetoric, and identity in the formulation of the law rather than a normative hermeneutic approach, which sees the law as the result of a seemingly scientific process.
CSS: Short for cascading style sheets, CSS is an approach to conveying style information for online document.
Cuisine: A cultural code for the process by which food is made delicious.
Culture: Situated system of meaning.
Cultural analytics: Approach to communication research based on the work of Lev Manovich which supposes that computational methods offer new insights.
Cutaneous rabbit: A sensorial illusion that a touch is moving across rather than jumping from point to point.
Decibels: A logarithmic scale for the measurement of sound volume.
Deconstruction: Literary process which finds oppositions in the text that are structured as binaries and shows that they are not in fact opposites or are mutually constituted. Within those moments there may be undecidable cases that could be referred to as aporia. Attempts to decide the undecidable are a key point for the introduction of ethical judgment.
Deduction: A process of logical reason that proceeds from explicit principles.
Deep fakes: Simulated video experiences produced by neural nets that overcome the uncanny valley.
Depth perception: The degree to which the visual system can produce a rendering of the world that accurately accounts for the distance between objects.
Deliberation: When people use critical reason together to decide a course of action.
Derrida: Jacques Derrida was a literary theorist who developed an approach to deconstruction that emphasized the resolution of false binaries. This method could put key terms under erasure, resignify them, or emphasize the degree to which the terms of a binary depend on each other. The additional meaning that is concealed in the construction of the binary is positioned as alterity. Derrida’s important quote “there is nothing outside the text” is often misread as a form of solipsism, when the implication of the statement is that any calculation of reality itself depends on discursive assumptions, which should also be subject to critique. There is no simple disavowal of discursive critique through the invocation of the “real world.” This approach to reading social science as literature has been quite influential.
Design: The understanding of a plan for the construction of a thing (conceived broadly).
Desire: A feeling of wanting. Foundational to the human condition.
Desire lines: Lines where the grass has been worn away from a lawn by people walking where they want, rather than on a designated path.
Dialogic: The quality of communication that appreciates the rich potential of dialog.
Diffusion: The flow or spread of an idea or light.
Digital humanities: The disciplinary term used to describe research in the humanities that utilizes contemporary computational tools.
Digital sublime: This idea from Vincent Mosco is that a new technology, in this case digital communication, presents a radical new potential for change.
Discipline: An academic construction that isolates key epistemic and ontological features of a domain of study. Psychology, for example, would be concerned with the psyche of the individual. All academic disciplines utilize founding narratives and other mechanisms to maintain their coherence. Often these moments depend on constitutive exclusion; they define the code of what the discipline is by what it is not.
Discrete: Objects for analysis that are not smooth like a double or an integer, but a series of distinct values or statements.
Dramatism: An approach to understanding communication which supposes that human understanding is structured like a narrative. The proper tools for understanding communication are those of storytelling and drama, like events and characters. An example includes Burke’s pentad.
Echo: A reflection of a sound that includes the attack from that sound.
Ecology: Media exist in a physical world that is affected by the production of equipment, generation of electricity, and human behavior elicited by media.
Electromagnetic spectrum: The range of possible wavelengths for electromagnetic energy.
ELOChess: Ranking of players in games can be hard. ELOChess provides a continuous means for integrating new information about chess players.
Emergence: The transformative potential of novelty that emerges from the proximity of systems or ideas.
Emotional design: A specific approach to understanding design that attempts to produce a specific emotional reaction.
Engineering: The systematic practice of designing systems or things.
Entropy: The tendency for systems toward disorder. In information theory, this is the tendency for noise to overwhelm the signal.
Envelope: The presentation of an entire sound, from inception to end.
Episteme: The structures of thinking that must be present to make sense of what has appeared.
Equilibrium: When a system of communication adapts to stay in balance.
Epistemology: The study of systems of thinking. Epistemological thinking accounts for the ways that ideas are assembled.
Ethnography: The practice of writing about culture. As an approach to social science, ethnography refers to the experience of the researcher in the field, the process for organizing recollections, and the ways in which those recollections are presented in an authoritative context.
Evolution: The tendency of a system via social reproduction to change underlying form to adapt to conditions.
Excludable: A good that can be effectively controlled, limiting consumption.
Existential risk: Threats to the continued existence of human life.
Factual system of signs: The propensity for signs to be taken as facts in the consideration of other signs.
False consciousness: The idea that some message or idea has induced the reliance on wrong thoughts or information.
Fashion: A trend in style.
Federalism: An organizational scheme that uses layers with split responsibilities to facilitate creative decision making.
Field notes: The intermediate documents produced in ethnographic fieldwork. Intermediate documents are critical in many methods; in ethnography, a core consideration is the production of and organization of notes.
Film: A strip of material coated in an emulsion that registers light.
Flow: Theory of sequential media developed by Raymond Williams. This is the core theoretical construct for understanding television and social media. It is a cultural studies theory that approaches the sequencing of programs and commercials as articulation. It is a materialist media theory, derived from diary methods to describe how media are.
Flow state: A psychological state where an individual is engaged in strenuous cognitive effort but enjoys such effort to the degree that it seems easy.
FM: Short for frequency modulation, FM is an encoding system for information on multiple wavelengths, not analog.
Foucault: Michel Foucault was a social theorist who contended that the discourses of academic theories are understood to be immediately shaped by power. Foucault’s objects of critique include most social institutions. He was not a Marxist, as the theory of power and meaning in materialist work is inherently structuralist. Foucault’s poststructuralism enables a wide range of new social theory that understands the reflexive nature of power and discourse. Power and conflict are not monolithic, but a multiplicity of practices both positive and negative.
Fox: Isaiah Berlin’s description of an intellectual character who is widely interested and willing to consider multiple disciplines
Future shock: Extremely fast social change that results in social dislocation and reactionary activity.
Freedom of expression: The idea that discourse should, by rule, be permitted. This argument was developed by Louis Brandeis in his concurrence in Whitney v. California, the key point being judgment of speech is good, but such judgment should happen through social means, not through police power. The underlying theory of the public sphere inherent in freedom of expression supposes that some rhetorical or dialectical means will lead to progress if discursive processes are allowed to unfold.
Game: Any communication process that is gamelike. If this seems circular, you are right. Most definitions of game refer to amusement or pleasure. What matters for us in gaming is the understanding of the reflexive, goal-oriented, rule-driven structure of things that would be gamelike.
Game theory: A branch of decision science which supposes that simple versions of games can reveal key elements of human behavior.
Generativism: An approach to social science based on simulation.
Genius: The romantic idea that an individual has a gift that enables novelty. The assignment of the quality of genius has substantial implications, as it tends to wrap features of structures into the individual personality.
Geography: An academic discipline that describes space and place. Taken up in communication through the theory of a “spatial fix” where coremargins relationships are established for purposes of control and capital law. This can take the form of works on international media systems and on particular national contexts. Examples include Curtin on China, Havens on Hungary, Kumar on India, Tinic on Canada, and beyond.
Glutamates: Chemical compounds in food known to have a particular savory flavor.
Graphical user interface: Most computer users perceive of the computer environment as a world of images and objects, rather than text. Graphical interfaces are compelling abstractions that we rely on to understand the abstraction of information worlds.
Greenhouse gasses: Carbon dioxide and a number of other gasses are likely causing the earth’s temperature to increase. Although the temperature has fluctuated before, human society is not well adapted to deal with the speed of temperature changes in recent years. Many researchers see this as an important issue for the idea of the future, as it would be an intractable driver of change. It is also interesting because of the cognitive and communication issues associated with long change processes.
Grocery stores: Retail facilities that stock a large number of food items. Grocery is an especially interesting industry because these stores have unique logistical challenges that tend to preclude centralization.
Gruen: Victor Gruen was the key figure in the development of the modern introverted shopping mall. The mall as a civic technology was intended to reproduce the qualities of Vienna on the windswept, frigid plains of Minnesota.
Haptics: The study of the perception of touch as media.
Hearing: The capacity of a system, especially a human’s, to perceive sounds.
Heat: Energy, especially excess energy.
Hedgehog: Isaiah Berlin’s description of an intellectual character who is primarily devoted to the exploration of a single intellectual burrow.
Hedonomics: An approach to design that emphasizes user satisfaction, specifically user pleasure.
Hermeneutics: The study of the production of a text and the particular questions that help a critic understand a particular text.
Hero’s journey: A formalist approach to understanding narrative that sees the progress of a character through a number of important transformations.
Hologram: An image that exists within a medium which refracts laser light to produce a seemingly three-dimensional image.
HTML: Short for hypertext mark-up language, HTML is a simplistic language for the presentation of online document content.
Humancomputer interaction: The study of the features of user interaction with the abstract system of the computer.
Humanities: The study of the human condition, especially through the texts produced to explore that meaning.
Hypothesis testing: A model for the progression of science which supposes that the default condition of a hypothesis is null (that nothing happened). Research progresses when the null hypothesis is rejected by a procedure where a test is conducted with less than a .05 chance of randomness indicates that something did happen. Rejection of the null does not confirm the hypothesis; it merely indicates the rejection of the null.
Icon: A sign that looks like the thing. The signifier literally looks like the signified.
Ideograph: A special kind of sign which has taken on special qualities that organize publics with minimal positive content. The most important of these is the idea of “the people.”
Ideology: A discourse that handles the cognitive dissonance of holding multiple seemingly contradictory ideas at one time. Ideology critique is among the most common forms of public media criticism, as it offers conciliatory dramatic assumptions. On the other side are good people who merely lack information. More sophisticated research would suggest that belief and disagreement in belief are far more complex. Social science for the most part engages ideology as misinformation; the humanistic wing of the discipline follows the Sloterdijk axis, where ideology is “enlightened false consciousness.”
IFF: Short for International Flavors and Fragrances, an organization that produces standardized accounts of the tastes and smells.
Immersion: The perception of a person that they are “in” a story.
Index: A sign that likely is the causal result of another thing. Smoke is a sign of fire and an index of the action of fire.
Induction: A process of logical reason that proceeds to derive principles from many individual cases.
Industrialism: The organization of society and the economy around factories and mass production. The economic history of media industries follows industrial history.
Information: Information refers to data that are meaningful. Information theory is derived from the work of Shannon and Weaver, which hinges on the ratio of signal to noise in any given channel.
Infrastructures: Infrastructural research focuses on the ways in which communication systems work in a concrete sense. These can include platforms for distribution, logistics, and many other seemingly mundane details.
Interactivity: The property of a system to respond to user input.
Internet: A term describing networks of computer systems that provide ubiquitous connectivity and storage
Interpretant: The idea of the sign in the mind of the receiver, not the sender. For the purposes of semiotic analysis, meaning in the world outside the sender is much more important than the sender’s intent.
Integrated development environment: A type of computer software development software that is often used in communication research for cultural analytics. Typically these include a script function, package management, and version control.
Intertextuality: Texts refer to other texts. To some degree, all texts refer to each other; this is a key idea in the idea of the Death of the Author.
Iteration: The idea of repeating a process with feedback to improve that process. In research design, this can refer to a study that includes multiple smaller studies that sequentially improve.
JavaScript: A programming language commonly used for developing interactive websites.
Jet pack: The idea of the jet pack is used as a stand-in for any comical future technology like a hoverboard or a Mars colony.
Justification: A model of argument which assumes that the evaluation of an argument depends on the values of that situation. The specific fallacies or rules in that argumentative situation follow from the alignment of the type of argument presented in the world in which that argument operates.
Kairos: The experience of time as a point. Examples include religious celebrations (Lent), states of emergency (war), cultural forms (March Madness), affective modulations (summer).
Keyboards: A device that allows the user to quickly and efficiently input text into a computer system.
Lacan: Jacques Lacan developed an approach to psychoanalysis that complemented Sigmund Freud’s. The core structure for Lacan was the Real. The experience of pre-symbolic wholeness occurs before language. Many stand-ins are presented for the real, either through sublimation or transference. Theories involving stand-ins are important for contemporary ideology theory. From clinical practice, Lacan appreciated that the ongoing ability to produce new signs was an indicator of progress for a patient, who was thus neurotic rather than psychotic. Lacan was also critical of the analyst’s desire, the tendency for therapy to focus on the production of what would seem to be prosocial outcomes at the expense of the individuality of the patient. Lacan’s reinterpretation of the death drive is useful for a number of theories, as they account for seemingly bizarre outcomes.
Langue: A term from semiotics referring to the official version of language as used in a society.
Latent manifold: Clusters in the data space of an artificial intelligence model.
LLM: Short for large language model, an LLM uses attention alone (via Markov processes) to process the substance of human language.
Legitimation: All social systems must be legitimate. According to Manuel DeLanda, this process has symbolic and practical elements. Systems must maintain code systems that are coherent, while continuing to provide for the physical welfare of the people. Failing on either regard leads to crisis.
Lenticular overlay: A filter that is placed over an image to produce an illusion of depth or motion.
Light: A special subset of electromagnetic radiation that can be seen with the eye.
Logic gates: Collections of transistors that function as basic logical operators.
Ludology: The study of game systems that emphasizes the difference between games and other forms of media. Ludology typically uses a psychologizing rhetoric of experience.
Madeline: A cookie of particular interest to Proust.
Markov chain: An approach for modeling the transition of a system between discrete states.
Masters of suspicion: Paul Ricoeur’s term referring to Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche; typically used in lower-level courses to introduce the idea of language not necessarily being a transparent record of reality. It is important to understand that these theorists have different approaches.
Melodrama: Theorized extensively by Joni Anker, melodrama is a story with exaggerated characters, often dismissed as an ostensibly feminine form, and critical for understanding of public culture.
Methodology: A method includes ontology, epistemology, axiology, and rhetoric. Once established, a method will produce a particular sort of knowledge.
Microphone: A device that converts sound waves into a usable electrical signal.
Moments: Measurements of the shape of a function, particularly mean and variance.
Mother of all Demos: An event in 1968 where Douglas Engelbart presented all major elements of contemporary computing in a single system.
Mouse: A pointing device that allows a user to interact with the computer environment.
Move fast and break things: An early slogan at Facebook that signaled their agile culture. The slogan was abandoned when Facebook reached maturity, with stability as a key infrastructural value driver.
NAND/NOR: A logic gate that reads as true if both input are not true (NAND), or a gate that only reads as true if both are active (NOR).
Narrative: A story that typically includes characters, details, events, and some sense of progression.
Narratology: The study of game systems that emphasizes the similarity of those experiences to books or films. Narratology typically uses a humanistic/hermeneutic rhetoric of experience.
Net neutrality: A policy for the management of the scarce resources of the Internet that sees traffic as a common pool.
Neural networks: A computer process designed to simulate neural processing structures.
Neoliberalism: A form of capitalism that privileges only current prudence over all other possible capitalist virtues. It is a radicalized form of capitalism that would result in social dislocation.
N-grams: The idea that a collection of words (two are a bigram) can be the basis for computational processing rather than individual words.
Normcore: A possibly fictional fashion movement that emphasized what would be normal or less desirable. Such movements recur with some regularity.
Object-oriented ontology: A theoretical position concerned first and foremost with things and how they might exist beyond human perception.
Ontology: The study of the state of being. Philosophically inflected researchers tend to use this term to refer to the study of the metaphysical level of reality; engineers and others tend to see ontology as the description of the states of being within a particular episteme.
Orthogonal graphics editors: Visual perception hinges on the perception of edges, textures, and occlusions. The primary means by which images are produced are orthogonal editing platforms that present the image as a result of a composite z axis, typically presented as “layers.”
P-hacking: A description for the practice where researchers manipulate their methods to arrive at a study where the P value is less than .05, thus calling for the rejection of the null hypothesis and generally publishable results.
Platformization: The tendency of Internet companies to position themselves as transaction moderators.
Platform decay: Under anticompetitive conditions, platformized businesses degrade their underlying product quality rather than raising prices (this is difficult when prices are often free). This is also known as enshittification.
Pantone: A color produced by the Pantone corporation. Color research related to the development of Pantones can be valuable, and individual Pantones can be reliably reproduced.
Parole: A term from semiotics referring to the actual spoken language of a society or common use.
Patent: A legal regime protecting an invention. The full details of that system are disclosed in exchange for licensing rights. This is known as the patent bargain: in exchange for legal protection, science is fully disclosed.
Photorealism: The quality of a synthetic image that is like a photograph.
PHP: Originally short for personal home page, PHP, or hypertext preprocessor, is a language that provides a slate of specific tools to facilitate server-side interactivity on a website.
Pick-up pattern: The specific area around a microphone where that device tends to optimally “hear” sound. Knowing where your microphone records sound is a key skill for a sound recordist.
Pierce: Charles Sanders Pierce was an American theorist in semiotics, especially the triadic sign.
Pleasure center: Popular discourse where the brain has a “center” for pleasure, but this idea is not supported by the literature. There are many “hedonic hotspots.”
Polarizing: In optics, a filter that organizes light.
Polarizing stereo: A stereoptical system that uses clear filters (polarizing) to selectively deliver a video signal to each eye of a viewer.
Policy claims: A claim that a policy is normatively desirable.
Pragmatic: The level of communication where action is coordinated.
Precedent: The base hermeneutic concept of the common-law tradition, where courts interpret the law in ways similar to other courts in the same system. This does not mean that all precedents are considered equally, but that those precedents that are well regarded in that system are considered.
Price: Is a rationalized value assigned to an item? Before the advent of department stores, prices were far more fluid.
Probability: A measurement of the potential for an event to take place.
Problem finding: The practice of examining a system or a presented problem to find what would be a more vivacious problem.
Problem solving: The practice of producing a matrix of possible alternatives to solve a problem and the ongoing cycle of redefinitions of the problem until it is solved.
Proprioception: The experience of the combination of multiple sensations—especially touch, hearing, and vision—to understand the position of the body in space.
Proust: Author of In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust used as a metaphor to consider thick description in the context of ethnographic research where descriptions are extensive and detailed.
Public policy: An academic discipline related to the formulation of normative rules or laws that would improve the general welfare.
Publics: Imaginary alignments of people who would suppose that they are being spoken to.
Quantum computing: Computing systems that apply methods for the resolution of logical operators other than transistors.
Radio: A special subset of electromagnetic radiation that is often modulated to carry information.
Radio transmitters: Devices, typically vacuum tubes, that amplify signals for distant reception.
Rare earths: A selection of relatively common metals that are useful for advanced magnetic and electronic applications.
Reduction to the absurd: A process of logical reason that proceeds to reject a potential explanation by arriving at a point where an obviously false premise must be true to proceed.
Refactoring: The process by which code is rewritten to make it more functional.
Reflection: An energy wave bouncing off a surface.
Regulation: A subset of policies produced by executive agencies, rather than by deliberative bodies (legislatures) or courts.
Reliability: When repeatedly employed on a similar sample, a tool will return a similar result.
Relational dialectics: An approach to understanding relationships as being negotiated between positions and identifies. Relational dialectics offer an alternative to psychologizing definitions, which suppose that communication behaviors are keyed on psychological qualities or mechanistic stimulus responses.
Render: A process by which a signal is reproduced in a visible form.
Replication: The idea that study in social science should be possible to replicate given the described methods in an article. In humanistic research, this means that the researcher’s description of the field would be perceived with some continuity by others in the same situation.
Resolution: The pixel density of a display.
Retina: A sense organ in the rear of the eye where photoreceptors transduce light for transmission to the brain via the optic nerve.
Reverb: A reflection of a sound that does not include the attack from that sound.
RGB: Short for red, green, blue, RGB is a color space typically used with light; the mixture of these colors of light appears white.
Rhetoric: The study of a system of codes that are used to co-produce meaning, coordinate action, and imagine possible alternatives.
Rivalrous: A good that can only be consumed by one person at a time.
Rods: A set of photoreceptors that typically function in low light.
Romanticism: A discourse that emphasizes the genius individual and their perception.
Rupture: The idea that the past has broken. Rupture is the opposite of continuity.
Satellites: Devices in earth orbit that receive and transmit signals.
Saussure: Ferdinand de Saussure was a French theorist in semiotics, especially well known for his description of the reflexive circulation of the signified and the signifier.
Scalable: The idea that something can be expanded to apply in many cases.
Scarcity: The property of a limit or a limited supply.
Sears: Sears-Roebuck was a large retail chain notable for developing commercial infrastructure. The Sears catalog was the original everything store, and access to products outside the of the local supply chain was transformative. Offshoots of Sears revolutionized many industries.
Semantic: The level of communication where contours of meaning are developed.
Shirley cards: Standardized cards used to calibrate cameras.
Signifier: The label (expansive idea) for a thing or sign. When used in design theory, a signifier refers to the practice of explicitly labeling a part.
Signified: The thing that has been labeled; this could also include other signs.
Signs: The key unit of semiotics, a fusion combination of elements.
Signs are evolutionary: Signs are continuously changing. The individual producing the sign must consider all the potential signifiers and the way that they are tied to the interpretant.
SimCity: An important simulation-based game.
Simple: A design that aligns with the psychological expectations of the user. See also usability.
Simulacrum: A simulation that has taken on qualities more realistic than the original.
Simulation: The production of stand-ins for things, this takes on many roles across this book and should be read contextually in the section you are in. Thus a discussion of simulation in the context of Baudrillard likely refers to the virtuality of affect, while in a metaphysical context, it refers to the simulation hypothesis.
Singularity: It is possible that given adequate processing power, storage, and neural interfaces, all humans could become part of a single artificial intelligence.
Smell: A sensory modality primarily tied to aroma, perceived through the inhalation of gasses, particles, or other vapors.
Social sciences: A process for understanding the human condition through the processes of natural science.
Speakers: Devices that produce sound waves from an electrical signal.
Speculative: An approach to thinking that compares multiple future narratives.
Speed of light: The speed at which light moves: 186,000 miles per second.
Stereoptical: An image that is designed to provide the illusion of depth through means of isolated representation to each eye.
Stopwords: A list of words to be removed from a corpus for analysis.
Sugarscape: An important agent-based model.
Supervised vs. unsupervised machine learning: The degree to which a user controls the progression of a machine process. There is a deeper question of how the programming of any given system produces its output. Further, there tends to be a preference for less supervision.
Syllogism: A simplified statement that can be used for basic logic.
Symbol: A sign that is entirely synthetic. Almost all forms of writing in the West are symbolic.
Synecdoche: A part describing a whole or a whole describing a part. This is one of a number of important rhetorical forms.
Taste: A sensory modality primarily tied to the mouth and the sensation of flavors.
Taste buds: Sensory organs primarily found on the tongue that are capable of detecting a range of chemicals. Other touch receptors in the mouth also process relevant information for the sensation known as taste.
Taubman: Alfred Taubman was a designer of shopping malls in the United States, known to be careful with sensations.
Technological determinism: A critique of research that determines that a change in technology was likely the controlling force in a historical shift.
Temporality: The subjective experience of time.
Temporal validity: The specific validity concern of platforms changing so rapidly that researchers are unable to establish whether their research was valid in the first place.
Thick vs. thin description: Methodological concern for what data are. Thick description supposes that data are best described in extreme detail, at an almost literary level.
Time: Describes both chronos (the description of when something is) and kairos (the description of now as a moment or point). Both are important for understanding how the future is shaped.
Time zones: A form of political cartography that would seem to stabilize local times apart from solar time to facilitate control.
Time-axis manipulation: Four-dimensional media require the progression of time. The manipulation of a time sequence offers a considerable range of possibilities beyond the traditional theater, book, or painting.
Toy game: A simple game (like rock paper scissors) that is used as a model of agent behavior.
Transcendental: The idea that a feeling or thought can exceed context.
Transistors: Semiconducting assemblages that replace many functions of vacuum tubes and allow the creation of solid-state logic systems. Bipolar transistors allow the amplification of a signal introduced into a circuit. MOFSET transistors allow the field effect to control a second circuit as a switch.
Uncertainty mechanism: All games depend on some mechanism where uncertainty is produced, which can include the player.
Undersea cables: Necessary infrastructure for the connection of various Internet systems around the world.
Usability: A specific approach to understanding design that highlights task analysis and user satisfaction.
Validity: The degree to which research methods are aligned with the question asked and the world as a whole.
Video: The method for recording a stream of images on a magnetic tape.
Virtual: A condition typically referring to a simulation, either by a system or by the mind.
Vision: The perception of light.
Visualization: The production of visual models for complex systems. This is one of the primary digital methods along with search, navigation, augmentation. simulation, and play. At times, visualization is used as a synecdoche for all digital methods.
Walter Cronkite: An avatar for the trusted newsperson of the mid-twentieth century.
WikiLeaks: An organization founded by Julian Assange that publishes ostensibly secret information.

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