Search the World's Largest Database of Information Science & Technology Terms & Definitions
InfInfoScipedia LogoScipedia
A Free Service of IGI Global Publishing House
Below please find a list of definitions for the term that
you selected from multiple scholarly research resources.

What is Symbolic Form

Chapter 9
Handbook of Research on Knowledge-Intensive Organizations
Ernst Cassirer used this term to express distinct stages of human evolution represented by different modes of belief. They “mythic” stage was accompanied by a lack of human self-consciousness, as we conceive modern man possesses this. I equate the animistic impulse with this mythic state. I conceive that as man advances from the sensibility of the “book” towards the sensibility of the Internet, the current hegemony of post-mythic symbolic form is affected; infused with a re-awakened animism as the forces inchoate in the alphabetical imprisonment of the “book” sleep less deeply.
Published in Chapter:
Tyranny of the Eye? The Resurgence of the Proto-Alphabetic Sensibility in Contemporary Electronic Modes of Media (PC/Mobile Telephony); and its Significance for the Status of Knowledge
Stephen Sheard (Bradford University, UK)
Copyright: © 2009 |Pages: 18
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-176-6.ch009
Abstract
In this chapter the author offers an argument towards the resurgence of a proto-alphabetic imagination in electronic and mobile communications. It is suggested that contemporary trends in mobile telephony which encapsulate the earlier advances in PC development are shifting electronic media – not towards a mythic culture of the aural (McLuhan) but towards an admixture of the aural and visual, aslant the controlling trope of the alphabetical. It is argued that this separation of technologies resembles the predecessors of writing technologies of a “proto”-alphabetic nature. This infuses the literature of management with a metaphysical animism, which is redolent of the faded animism, which marked the initial confluence of the pre-alphabetical sensibilities of Eye and Voice in the pre-alphabetic emergence of mankind. This is suggested as a fresh Symbolic form towards which mankind is advancing. The confluence of ideological tensions preceding these developments is traced; including debates as to conflicts of Word and Sacred (Ricoeur); or Postmodern aversion towards contemporary ocular dominance. This debate leads towards an evaluation of the role and significance of kinds of knowledge which underpin our knowledge society and the knowledge which we take to constitute “knowledge management”.
Full Text Chapter Download: US $37.50 Add to Cart
eContent Pro Discount Banner
InfoSci OnDemandECP Editorial ServicesAGOSR