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Notes

Short essays on meaning in computational culture. Each note is dated, citable and open to response.

  • Paper companion

    AI and meaning · 5 min

    The ultimate forgery, in brief

    [Plain-language summary of the JASIST article: the claim, the method, and what it means for readers of generated text.]

  • Case reading

    Knowledge organization · 9 min

    Reading a chatbot citation as a sign

    A generated reference looks like a catalog record. One close reading asks what authorizes it and what a reader does with it.

  • Paper companion

    Knowledge organization · 6 min

    Knowledge without a knower?

    Domain analysis assumes a community that knows its domain. What changes when the system that classifies belongs to no community at all.

  • Concept note

    AI and meaning · 6 min

    Prompts as signs

    A prompt is read twice: by the model, and later by the person who reads the answer. One sign, two interpretive situations.

  • Dialogue

    Visual semiotics · 10 min

    Is the blue brain an icon or a metaphor?

    Two readings of the stock image that stands for AI, argued between Tampa and Copenhagen.

  • Teaching note

    Peircean method · 8 min

    Teaching Peirce with R

    How the open-source R package for Peirce's sign theory works in a classroom, and what students learn by coding a sign.

  • Reading notes

    AI and meaning · 12 min

    Semiotics and generative AI: an autumn 2026 reading list

    Ten recent articles worth a semiotician's time, with a paragraph on each.

  • Paper companion

    Visual semiotics · 6 min

    Big data visualization as a visual sign

    Charts claim to show data. Peirce's visual sign theory describes what they actually show and how a viewer completes the reading.

  • Concept note

    Peircean method · 7 min

    Speculative grammar for text generation

    Peirce's first branch of logic, applied to the conditions under which a generated sentence can signify at all.