Semiotic Proliferation in the Textualization of the World: 
What’s Happening to the World as it Sinks in a Flood of Signs, Regulations, Laws, Forms, Questionnaires, Roads, Concrete Constructions, Weapons, etc?

To use law to control a nation weakens the nation.
But to use nature to control a nation strengthens the nation.

Introduction (To an Open Forum)

	Semiotics is the study of signs, i.e., a study of their nature of presentation, meaning, their intentional exercise in a system or context within meta-systems/meta-contexts, etc., etc. In this paper we are referring to any intentionally constructed construct as deposited upon the surface of this Earth and elsewhere. E.g., in the 1950’s a satellite was launched. Thereafter, we have ‘polluted’ the skies above the earth with a proliferation of satellites, debris and other forms of space-junk. Occasionally a satellite is taken out of earth orbit and allowed to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere or land on Earth. This example of counter-proliferation is however, unfortunately, running against the tide of proliferation and, often, hyper-proliferation (to invoke the spirit of the French philosopher Baudrillard). I am sure you could add a very long list of other examples from the rubbish left at the Base Camp on Mt Everest and the bases in the Antarctica to the explosion in the use of plastic shopping bags and non-recyclable plastic containers… and so on ad infinitum… ad nauseam…! (1)

	This practice of proliferation extends not only from the making of objects and our utilization of such constructions but also to our production of texts in a more classical sense! In America fifty percent of all books printed are pulped! At least half of this printed material is recycled. But, if you take the quantity that is not pulped each year and add it up, year on year, year after year, you should realize we are left with expanding ‘mounds’ of paper despite the misplaced pronouncements predicting a paperless office, etc., in this age of the computer, CD-Roms, the Internet…. (2)

	How are we to understand this general tendency to proliferate? It would appear that with increasing numbers of people becoming middle class, so to speak, we no longer multiply our species to the same extent as happened only a few generations earlier. On the other hand, we now, instead, proliferate, and, often as agents of hyper-proliferation. We need only ask “how many televisions we might own, how many pairs of shoes we might possess, how many books we might have on our bookshelves, how many CD’s, DVD’s we might have accumulated, etc?” To understand this tendency to proliferate, if not to hyper-proliferate, let me recount the following anecdote. (3)

	A number of years ago I grew a small moss garden in a bowl probably no more than eight inches in diameter. A small lake was simulated in the middle of this bowl, also a really big volcanic shaped mountain, some other mountainous regions and a series of plains in between all planted out with a variety of different coloured mosses. I would water it once or twice a day, occasionally weed it and it gave me a lot of pleasure as I tended this little world on my desk. Then one day I moulded a small castle in clay and plonked it down on one of those flat areas. Before long I had a number of other little castles on other geographically distinctive regions of this world in a bowl, each one representing an individual country. But this world continued to take on a ‘life of its own’. Between ‘different countries’, on their geographical borders, I now added a defensive installation, namely, one more castle. Then, in an explosion of building, I found the other countries following suit until, at last count, I had over fifty castles on this small world of a moss garden within a bowl. It seems old modes of life are re-iterated, and, innovations too are proliferated. ( 4)

I am reminded of a guided walk I did in the Blue Mountains where we were shown a site where the aboriginals would manufacture stone implements beside a river. On the large flat rocks their surfaces were interlaced with grooves from thousands of years of tool making. I was told, not satisfied to make just a few tools and leave them at each of their periodic campsites they entered into an economy where there was a proliferation of tool making. More tools were made per person than were ever needed. It is almost as if what is practiced becomes a habit over which only other habitualized economic processes can divert, interrupt or disrupt that prior pattern of habitualized behaviour. No doubt this state of relative cessation is achieved by the intervention of other forms of proliferation, and, in this light, one must also wonder if it were not the case that the mega-fauna that inhabited this continent of Australia, before the advent of homo sapiens, were dispatched purely in the mindless pursuit of a proliferation of overkill; a general pattern of behaviour that seems to characterize all human cultures in so far as it seems to be ‘normal practice’ to over-consume the limited availability of our resources? (5)

	Where does this tendency for proliferation lead? It takes little imagination to perceive that, before too long, the entire surface of this planet will soon be covered in mounds of books, televisions, car types, butter and other diary products, soya beans, oil cans, concrete building, roadways, advertising billboards, etc. Indeed, along the way every possible niche for advertising will also be exploited too! So, we get advertisements on the steps at railway stations, on the sides of taxis and buses, on the tops of buildings, on the tops and sides of our computer screens, on billboards walked by under-employed youth along our congested streets, on rolls of toilet paper… perhaps even projected to us from space and on to the undersides of clouds when conveniently to hand. Should we laugh…  or should we cry… or should we just profoundly despair?! (6)

	As an optimist, and I believe this open forum today is a sign that this trust is not completely misplaced, we must ask ourselves “what is being done about proliferation, and, indeed, hyper-proliferation?” Here, we have, e.g., yearly campaigns to ‘clean up Australia’. If we look around we do see attempts to moderate if not reverse these tendencies to proliferate. Sometimes these programs of activity are organized from the top down by governments. Other programs seem to be organized from the bottom up, i.e., by individuals or local communities. All these reactive processes of counter-proliferation seem to be ideologically based in processes of consciousness-raising and in some form or other we must ask, in the light of Global Warming, Ozone Depletion, etc., if enough is happening fast enough to overcome and rectify this tendency both to semiotically proliferate and to preserve accumulations of past semiotic proliferation? (7)

	What other alternatives do we have? In noise pollution there is a rule of thumb that states “that the source of the noise pollution is best dealt with whenever and wherever possible rather that insulating areas that surround the locus of that problem.” In a similar fashion we must ask, rather, insist, that this proliferation in all its forms be tackled at their source rather than retrospectively! What else do all of us have to look forward to if the world must madly have its resources depleted in an overproduction of products for the relatively few?! Here we must ask “is a greater democratization of the Life-World the path that should be traveled on in this regard?” A path that must be taken up by all the citizens of this world? Surely, to date, relatively non-democratic means have failed us? What other alternatives are there? (8)

	I have, as follows, a certain type of situation in mind that might act as a prototypical laboratory for us to virtually experiment within in order to understand how both as individuals and as various overlapping organizations we might better deal with this very human type of situation where, unchecked, we proliferate by habit... Imagine an office where a certain number of forms are being used. Now, as true to human nature, there is an incremental increase in the number of forms year after year that operate with subtle injunctions that they must be produced and utilized. In the light of this hypothetical situation, and its inevitable institutionalization and consequent wastage of resources, how do we go about reviewing this hyper-proliferation of forms and their silent and invisible bureaucratic imperatives that insist on their being produced, completed, processed and filed, etc? How would you go about such a review? How would you put that review into effect if you were not management, or, were middle management, or upper management, or local government, or federal government, or as a concerned member of the public? (9)

	A number of other issues also need to be addressed by this open forum: First, we must ask “do we really have a problem?” “Are we happy or accepting of the idea that the surface of the world eventually is going to be one huge conurbation, one vast city with a lace-like network of roads between concrete constructions where everyone will live in a mansion without a garden other than a few token pots with cacti outside and ferns inside…?” Second, what forms of proliferation are there? Third, how can we prospectively and proactively de-proliferate at the source as well as counter-proliferate retrospectively? Lastly, we must ask “what will the consequences be if we do not successfully instigate processes of de-proliferation and counter-proliferation?” Or, should we be completely optimistic and just assume that technological and political forms of progress through future innovations will naturally resolve these types of issues? This is not an impossible state of affairs to expect? E.g., if we were to successfully harness fusion we might well have a source of relatively unlimited energy without the side effects attendant upon our current overuse of fossil fuels and fission. But such is not yet a fact of life (although a positive trend in this direction is already in existence?)? All in all we have much to examine and much to reflect upon…! (11)
         Noël Tointon, Sydney, 12.5.06.