Abstract
Next society differs from modern society in its use of electronic and digital media. Computers – encompassing platforms, programmes, algorithms and machine learning models – are beginning to participate in communication in a way that were previously exclusive to humans. This paper explores the concept of ‘interpenetration’, the mutual accessibility of the complexity among social systems, psychic systems and computers, to examine the distinctions that will shape this next society. Three key distinctions emerge: the distinction of communication between the local and the global, of perception between seeking irritants and protecting against them, and of the computer between predictive data and data space. Together, these distinctions define the ‘reality’ of the next society. A calculus of medium and form describes the operation that differentiates and reproduces this society: while its forms are unstable, its medium remains stable. Ultimately, the communication of digital data both constitutes and reproduces the next society. Data complement values as the two connective media of society – one operating at the normative, the other at the cognitive level.
Farewell to modernity
In this paper, to define the next society, I first distinguish it from modern society and then examine the distinctions it makes to produce and reproduce itself.
Modern society is characterised by a form of social differentiation shaped by the introduction and implementation of the printing press. In contrast, the next society is defined by its engagement with electronic and digital media. Each medium of communication–writing, the printing press, electronic and digital media–generates its own kind of meaning overflow, which challenges the structure and culture of a society to respond. My approach, however, does not adopt a deterministic view of technology’s impact on social structures; rather, it examines how different communication technologies are embedded in society and, in turn, shaped by it. There is a circular relationship between technologies, social structure and culture: society actively shapes its use of technology, while technology, in turn, limits the range of possible designs and cultural imagination. Each new medium introduces new communication opportunities while simultaneously creating and supporting new inequalities.
To distinguish next society is to distinguish it from modern society. Niklas Luhmann (2012: 248-250; see Baecker, 2006, 2011), following Marshall McLuhan and the Toronto School of Communication, argues that the advent of electronic and digital media will transform the structure and culture of society as profoundly as the printing press did for modern society and writing did for ancient society. New media introduce a new ‘surplus reference of meaning’, if not a ‘meaning overflow’, expanding the possibilities for action and experience within the society. This applies to all forms of media–language, symbolically generalised media and media for disseminating communication:
With the advent of language an overflow of references to things absent and unverifiable had to be controlled by a tribal structure and a culture of secrecy. 1
With the advent of writing an overflow of symbols referring to the past and future had to be controlled by a structure of social strata and a culture of teleology.
With the advent of printing an overflow of criticism fuelled societal dynamism, brought forth a structure of functional subsystems and a culture of self-referential equilibrium.
Finally, with the advent of electronic and digital media, an overflow of images and data–interconnecting every communication with potentially every other–must be controlled by a structure of networks and a culture of complexity.
The procedure remains the same, even though the media differ and society develops distinct forms of structure and culture. The pattern is at follows: new media generate an overflow of meaning that the existing structure and culture of a society cannot accommodate. As a result, new structures and culture forms must emerge to distribute this overflow across different spheres of society (‘structure’) and condense it into a redundant pattern applicable to all social situations (‘culture’). This overflow affects both action and experience, requiring a reorientation of what people do and how they interpret their experiences. Society’s structure determines where and from whom meaning is expected, while its culture ensures that social situations are recognised as familiar or, in contrast, unfamiliar. However, every established structure and culture is inevitably overwhelmed by the ‘message’ of new media which, as McLuhan (1964) puts it, is a ‘change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs’ (p. 8). It is no exaggeration to speak of four media catastrophes that have shaped human history–if we define ‘catastrophe’ as a fundamental shift in a society’s mode of communication.
There is a certain irony in noting that it was the advent of television for Marshall McLuhan (1962) and the computer for Niklas Luhmann (2012, 2013) that prompted them to write the history of modern society–just as that history is probably coming to an end. Only now does it become evident that the dynamisation of society through the printing press–which enabled everyone to read, write and form critical opinions on everything from religion and politics to education and gardening–forced society to become ‘modern’. This happened in two ways: first, by channelling criticism into the spheres of market competition, democratic contest, positive law, confessionalised religion, universal education and subjective taste in the arts; and, second, by interpreting constant change and instability through the lens of equilibria to be maintained.
However, the instantaneity of electronic and connectivity of digital media undermine both the modern structure of functional subsystems and the modern culture of equilibrium. Neither moving images nor an information flow driven by data storage, fast algorithms, communication platforms and problem-solving applications follow the rational order of functional subsystems or the idea of control through equilibrium. Instead, they cluster around profiles, revealing a complex interplay of mental agitation, emotions and agendas–dynamics that can only be controlled by dissipative systems far from equilibrium. Sigmund Freud’s (1999: 389) idea that the mind functions as an escape from irritants (Reizflucht) thus becomes the governing principle for the constitution and reproduction of all social systems. Only systems that reproduce homeostatically–by maintaining their internal equilibrium–can survive in turbulent environments.
However, removing irritants requires an awareness of their impact, even if only briefly (Goetz, 2024). Systems cannot avoid being changed.
Next society
There is no clear-cut transition from modernity to a next society in the history of humanity. Immanuel Kant (1992 [1763]) began to conceptualise electricity in terms of a positive-negative tension. The telegraph was introduced in the 1860s, and by the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries electricity had become the epitome of a ‘nervous era’ (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, see Asendorf, 1989; Radkau, 1998). Radio and television were invented in the 1920s and 1950s, the computer in the 1940s, the Internet in the 1990s and Artificial Intelligence in successive waves in the 1950s, 1970s, 1990s and beyond. Modern society is not simply being replaced; rather, it is ‘aging’ (Lehmann, 2015; Luhmann, 1995: 379). Its functional subsystems are transforming into ‘discourses of justification’, ‘poleis’ or ‘modes of existence’ (Boltanski and Chiapello, 2005; Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Latour, 2013). Yet, a new societal supercode is emerging–one that differentiates between the inclusion and exclusion of populations. This supercode is structured around networks (Castells, 1999 [1996]; White, 2008) and appears better suited to managing the new overflow of meaning produced by computing data spaces.
Peter F. Drucker (2001; see Baecker, 2007, 2018) uses the term ‘next society’ to describe a society on the verge of developing ‘new institutions’ and ‘new theories’ with the advent of computers and their networks. This society continues to talk, write and print, meaning that established structures–tribes, strata and functional subsystems–as well as familiar cultural forms–secrets, teleology and equilibria–persist. At the same time, however, a new meaning overflow exerts pressure on society to adapt to instantaneous and connective data. The humanist culture of the Enlightenment succeessfully eliminated non-human participants from communication–no more ghosts, devils, gods, sacred places, mythical texts or even plants and animals taking part. Yet now, fast computers intervene in communication by interpreting input according to hidden programmes and deep neural networks, generating output with uncertain, if not absent, authority.
If modern society was largely defined by autonomous systems–beginning with the self-interested individual and bureaucratic organisation (in business, government, the church, universities, schools and even artistic institutions) and extending to the differentiation of democratic politics, the market economy, positive law, empirical science, confessionalised religion and independent arts–then the next society is re-discovering connectivity. Functional systems do not disappear, of course, but they face a turbulent reality that forces them to seek new alliances with other systems in their environments. This turbulence arises from two external factors, possibly mirrored by an internal factor, all of which contribute to feed-back rich relationships between systems and their environments.
The two external factors are climate change and migration. They are ‘external’ in the sense that both climate and population are observed as features of the environment of social systems, yet they are products of the autonomous functioning of these systems. It is only in the past 50 years–reinforced by the reports of the Club of Rome 2 –that society has begun to recognise its responsibility for these developments. Climate change is the result of a runaway system of fossil energy exploitation, which has driven industrialisation and urbanisation–without anyone knowing how to escape the fatal dynamic it has set in motion. This system has generated its own social crises, ranging from wars over national borders to rising inequality, driven by unprecedented wealth accumulation in a growing population–now increasingly including regions that were previously excluded from this economic expansion. Migration is one of the prices that global society is paying for this development–and at the same time one of the most important indicators of the need to find solutions to the problem.
The internal factor is the combination of television and computer. The instantaneity of television transforms the world into a ‘global village’, where no one can avoid learning about others’ living conditions and comparing them to their own. This is complemented by the connectivity of computers, which turn the world into a data space rich in new patterns of events and activities. It is an internal factor because both technologies are shaped, directed and extended by the social systems that create and use them. So-called ‘social media’ or online platforms of virtual communities merge vivid moving images and data processing, both realising and symbolising the new world of connectivity.
If modern society proves incapable of managing catastrophic situation brought about by largely autonomous systems (Beck, 1992; Beckert, 2024; Luhmann, 1989; Willke, 2023), is there any indication that the next society will be better equipped to recognise disasters unfolding in its environment? Are new ‘modes of existence’ (Latour, 2013) emerging that acknowledge the intricate connections between social systems and their surroundings? Are there more network ‘disciplines’ of the ‘interface’ type that emphasise the ‘quality’ aspects of their operations, counterbalancing the influence of disciplines such as ‘arenas’ and ‘councils’, which prioritise ‘purity’ and ‘prestige’ (White, 2008: chap. 3)? Over time, could ‘quality’ become the key dimension through which matters of fact and social contacts form a ‘valuation ordering’ that best reflects the links between system and environment?
Interpenetration
Perhaps Talcott Parsons’ and Niklas Luhmann’s (1995: chap. 6) concept of ‘interpenetration’ is well-suited to observing the dynamic between social systems, humans and computers–one that may become central to the structure and culture of the next society. Parsons’ (1961) definition of ‘interpenetration’ reads as follows: ‘(. . . ) the concept of interpenetration implies that, however important logical closure may be as a theoretical ideal, empirically social systems are conceived as open systems, engaged in complicated processes of interchange with environing systems’ (p. 31).
With Luhmann (1995: 410), the conceptual architecture of social systems theory shifted to emphasise the operational closure of self-referential systems. However, ‘interpenetration’ is still cited as ‘the condition of possibility for self-referentially closed autopoiesis’: Communication ‘can only be reproduced as information-processing action and experience. Thus the closure of recursive communicative relationships does not liberate the system from the environment. It is and remains dependent on sensors that convey environment. These sensors are human beings in the full sense of their interpenetration: as psychic and as bodily systems’ (Luhmann, 1995).
Luhmann (1995) devotes Chapter 6 of his book Social Systems to the concept of interpenetration and defines ‘interpenetration’ as ‘an intersystem relationship between systems that are environments for each other. (. . . ) We speak of “penetration” if a system makes its own complexity (and with it indeterminacy, contingency, and the pressure to select) available for constructing another system. Precisely in this sense social systems presuppose “life”. Accordingly, interpenetration exists when this occurs reciprocally, that is, when both systems enable each other by introducing their own already-constituted complexity into each other’ (p. 213).
Interpenetrating systems provide each other with sufficient disorder–not necessarily ‘adequate disorder’, as the translation suggests (Luhmann, 1995: 214), but rather ‘hinreichende [sufficient] Unordnung’, as Luhmann (1984: 291) writes. ‘Sufficient’ for whom, one might ask. A reverberation of Parsons’ discussion of ‘logical’ closure can still be heard when Luhmann adds that the question of interpenetration is (Luhmann, 1995: 216), ‘[w]hat must be given in reality so that an experience of double contingency and with it a construction of social systems can emerge with sufficient frequency and density?’
Of course, Luhmann’s ‘closure’ is not a ‘logical’ one, but a self-referential recursion–one that has its own reality, even if it can only be assumed axiomatically and never empirically proven. 3 Closure cannot be ‘seen’, ‘touched’ or ‘heard’. However, one can see, touch and hear the reality that systems absorb in their complexity to self-referentially initiate and reproduce their operations.
Luhmann (1995) adds that the complexity made available through the interpenetration of systems is specifically temporal. Both systems function as event systems, whose operations arise and disappear, decay and are structurally reproduced. Their complexity ‘from moment to moment selects its own states and can be influenced therein’ (Luhmann, 1995: 217). The systems involved are inherently restless, ensuring that they can be structurally connected one moment and diverge the next. There is no inherent limit to the complexity with which they challenge each other, as they can evade one another at any given moment–yet no challenge passes without leaving its mark.
Other forms of complexity may also be considered–where ‘complexity’ is defined as the paradox of the unity of diversity and the diversity of unity. It is easy to see how psychic complexity (not to mention the complexity of the brain) accelerates as soon as any one social proposal must be evaluated in light of potential objections from others. The opinion of the ego is always framed by the opinion of the alter, and vice versa, without even considering the third party, who may either intensify or pacify dissent (Simmel, 1950: 145-169). This dynamic gives rise to social complexity. There is no social situation without the presence of an ego and an alter, and no way–except through romantic fusion and communal coercion–to reduce one to the other or to a third. By shifting between first-, second- and third-person perspectives, the social system makes social complexity accessible to the psychic system. Conversely, by handling these shifts differently–accelerating or slowing them down, or introducing additional perspectives–psychic systems in turn make their complexity available to the social system. For instance, in kinship structures, the accumulation of primary roles into chains defining compound roles (White, 1963: 1) allows children to choose how to address their parents when making a request: as their parents, as spouses to one another, or as children of their own parents.
And there is factual complexity. It arises whenever an object under consideration can be perceived as what it appears to be or as something entirely different, depending on a shift in context or a deeper level of understanding. Today, no object exists without its own ecological imponderability. Once again, social systems that engage with this kind of factual complexity make it accessible to psychic systems, which, in turn may respond unpredictably due to their own internal complexity.
I mention the interpenetration of social and psychic systems because the computer has emerged as a new participant in communication–introducing yet another system with which to interpenetrate. Considering the role of computers, which may ‘act’ and ‘experience’ as nontransparently as humans, Luhmann (2012) recommended an ‘indeterminacy position’ (p. 66) regarding their place in the further development of social theory.
This indeterminacy position can also be understood within the triangle of mutual interpenetration among social systems, psychic systems and computers. Referring to a ‘triangle’ is, of course, an oversimplification, as multiple social systems must be considered–such as interaction systems and organisations–alongside 8 billion human beings, each with their own consciousness and body. In addition, there exists an uncountable number of electronic platforms, software programmes, algorithms and machine learning systems, each with its own access to and processing of data. Further uncertainty arises from the question of whether a ‘system’ of computers capable of interpenetration even exists. Both individual computers and networks of computers function as technical systems that remain opaque regarding the data they store, the algorithms that link these data and the learning programmes that generate unexpected outputs. Moreover, as far as we know, computers lack self-reference–meaning they do not maintain state functions beyond their existing transformation functions. As a result, even if ‘complicated’ (not: complex) they remain ‘trivial’ (Von Foerster, 1984) in terms of their non-historicality, synthetic determination and, at least in principle, analytic determination.
These three forms of complexity–temporal, social, and factual–combine into a triple complexity. Systems emerge and disappear. People meet and part ways. Things that seem reliable often prove otherwise. The complexity made available to interpenetrating psychic and social systems must be highly malleable, balancing stability and fluidity. Perhaps this is why emotions have come to play such a central role in social research (Hochschild, 1983).
However, this paper does not present an empirical study but rather seeks to provide a theoretical clarification. Some simplifications may therefore be necessary. First, we consider a world society–one that faces global problems and solutions and shares something akin to a common culture, at least in terms of mutual recognition, if not universally standardised modes of communication that facilitate search and reach. This does not to negate regional differences in politics, economics, law, religion, education or the arts, nor does it overlook cultural divides marked by deep rejection of the other or bureaucratic styles shaped by local traditions. Nevertheless, we can speak of a world society because every social position within it is constantly aware of others (Luhmann, 1990a), engaging in comparison–whether to imitate or to differentiate.
Second, the world’s 8 billion human beings are, amazingly, 8 billion psychic systems–socialised and educated within a society that provides them with language, writing, the printing press and symbolically generalised media such as money, power, faith, law, truth and art. These media are universally available, but, due to exclusion, not universally accessible, regardless of individual levels of education. Each person is an ‘individual’ (Luhmann, 2022), finding orientation through imitation and asserting individuality through variation (Tarde, 1969). Many people know how to read and write, though illiteracy, disability and neurodiversity must not be overlooked. Moreover, most individuals recognise that they are no longer addressed solely by their place and status at birth but rather by their ability to access and navigate the symbolic media of communication (Parsons, 1977). The complexity they introduce to social systems is not merely a matter of conforming to norms and deviating from them; rather, at any given moment, they generate third options that had not previously been considered. Social systems, in turn, respond with ‘ambage and ambiguity’ (White, 2008: 57f.)–either offering ways to socially avoid interaction, thereby increasing social contingency, or reinterpreting these actions, thereby adding to cultural complexity.
Third, the computer introduces connectivity to the instantaneity of electronic media (McLuhan, 1964; Schmidt and Cohen, 2013). It is an invisible machine, creating a new kind of depth–reminiscent of the transcendental depths of religion (Luhmann, 2012: 182)–that is both perceptible on the surface of its displays and inaccessible within its networks, programmes, algorithms and data storage. The computer participates in communication by receiving, processing and presenting data–yet no one fully understands exactly how it operates. The complexity it offers to both psychic systems and social systems lies in its ability to combine technological control with the unpredictability and evidentiary power of analytical precision.
Networks
The question I seek to answer is: what kinds of social systems can emerge from the interpenetration of world society, psychic systems and computers. World society implies that no communication occurs whithout being doubly shaped–by the local situation on one hand and the global state of society on the other. This is why ‘situation’ serves as the analytical unit of any theory of society, and ‘orientation to situation’ forms the foundation of any sociological description (Parsons and Shils, 1951). The concept of ‘communication’ captures this dynamic just as well, as communication inherently oscillates between the search for the next step and the contextual conditions that shape that search. Communication depends on differentiation and reproduction, making the reciprocal exchange of information between the local and the global a fundamental condition of its existence.
Psychic systems bring perception. Vision, sound, smell, taste and feelings are produced by organisms, registered by consciousness and selectively made available to communication. Pamphlets, files, books, newspapers, music, theatre, visual art, film, television and gourmet cuisine, therapy and coaching all engage with these sensory registers–shaping both individuals and the communication that responds to them.
At first glance, the computer does not seem to add much to this dynamic. The integration of multiple perceptual formats into a multimedia experience, while significant, does not fundamentally alter the situation–though it does contribute to dissolving the ‘functional’ differentiation of these formats in domains such as work, news, art and assistance. Whereas radio and television, as broadcast media, could be clearly situated within the functional sphere of mass communication, the computer screen is embedded in all forms of behaviour, action and experience–injecting data into every possible decision about what to consider and how to proceed. And it is fast. While perception and consciousness were once the fastest processes in relation to communication, it is now data that outpace the psychic system.
These data do not conform to the functional differentiation of ‘modern’ printing press society. They seamlessly merge the political with the economic, the legal with the religious and the scientific with the aesthetic–faster than anyone can distinguish between them. Moreover, they incorporate elements of organisation and interaction, blurring decision-making processes and disrupting established patterns of mutual orientation. Whether on a dating platform or an agile work interface, the screens of a trading floor or the monitors of a battlefield, a medical protocol or the prompts of machine learning programmes, each input is processed within a high-dimensional data space and met with a performative output that seems almost too good to be true.
Computers and their programmes begin to participate in communication much like humans once exclusively did–not to mention the ghosts and devils, plants and animals of pre-humanist times. As previously noted, Luhmann (2012) suggests reserving an ‘indeterminacy position’ (p. 66) for the role of computers, both in the concept of ‘communication’ and in the description of societal evolution. According to self-referential social systems theory, it is as impossible to ‘communicate’ with computers as with humans. Communication is understood as an operation that generates and sustains social systems through the double contingency arising from the interplay between psychic systems or other sufficiently complex entities. Both humans and computers, along with other ‘virtual contingencies’ (Esposito, 2022: 11), function as addresses within the structure of social systems (Muhle, 2018). While they may provide action, their relevance ultimately depends on how social systems produce and reproduce themselves.
What kind of social system, slower than both consciousness and the computer, can differentiate, integrate and reproduce under conditions where computers and their programmes provide fast data, rich connectivity and vast memories? What social system can regulate the computer’s control at the very moment that control is conferred upon it by the same or other systems? Such a system must be capable of both absorbing all kinds of possible data and dismissing most of them. A strong positivity in data handling must be counterbalanced by an equally strong negativity–an ability to filter and reject excessive input. Moreover, it must perform this selection process rapidly and reversibly, as the potential for error is immense.
A structure capable of managing the interpenetration of world society, psychic systems and computers–while operating under the condition of a rapid reception and rejection–appears to be a network structure. Networks not only connect heterogeneous elements, such as the technological, the individual and the communicative (Castells, 1999 [1996]), they also function through a ‘calculus of uncertainty’ (White, 2008), wherein new elements (both nodes and links) can be added or lost at any moment. Unlike in systems, networks lack fixed boundaries–or rather, their boundaries must be continuously redrawn. Each element must remain attractive to the network in order to sustain the ‘identity’ it simultaneously adopts. Every newly added link risks introducing opportunities that may render the node that created it obsolete. For all elements involved, operating within the network means ensuring they do not drop out.
Networks align with our condition of threefold interpenetration, enabling the testing of ‘realities’ that correspond to the ‘identity’ of a place, a history, the people involved, organisations and institutions, practices and conventions, a culture and a mission. The network determines the inclusion and exclusion of its heterogeneous elements through a calculus of data–increasingly including computer-generated data–produced and utilised in its operations.
Nobody knows whether the ‘next society’ will be a network society. Networks provide a structural response to the rise of electronic and digital media, aligning with a form of connectivity that is no longer based on functional subsystems but on interpenetration. The rational calculus of societal problem-solving is replaced by a calculus of complexity that must be navigated. Singular and idiosyncratic networks emerge, clustering around specific realities–those of perception, communication and computation. Historical knowledge of which orientations prevail in particular situations becomes as crucial as a general understanding of system typologies. A sign of this shift is the renewed interest in ‘culture’, reflecting an engagement with identities framed by complexity.
Unstable forms
A triple interpenetration is a triple oscillation, organising a triadic reality in which each component is as significant as the others. World society oscillates between local and global communication, psychic systems fluctuate between seeking irritants and shielding against them and the computer shifts between predictive data and data space. The three distinctions–communication, irritation and data–interact, each offering its complexity to the others, momentarily establishing a common ground where certain people engage with certain objects based on specific data.
At any given moment, multiple social systems, psychic systems and possibly computers reproduce and form shifting constellations of networks that emerge and decay. Distinguishing next society requires identifying the singular operation capable of differentiating and reproducing a society that navigates this multiplicity. If such a singularity exists, sociological theory must pinpoint it as a specific type of operation–one that accommodates the complexity of all three systems, engages with them, respects them selectively and allows them to unfold freely. While each system may attempt to impose its structure on the others, as long as their distinctions persist, the interplay of local and global communication, the search for and protection against irritants, and the dynamics of predictive data and data space ensure that all three systems maintain their autonomy and that a triple complexity prevails.
The defining operation of the next society is shared by both social and psychic systems, and it seems only a matter of time before computers catch up. This societal calculus integrates social and psychic systems as meaning systems (Fuchs, 2015). Their ‘integration’ does not imply uniformity but rather the production of realities that both systems can interpret and encode–either as local or global and either as irritant or escape. Both social systems and psychic systems utilise predictive data and their conceptualisation of data space to register, enrich and monitor their realities.
As might be expected, an operation suitable for this purpose must be abstract enough to encompass the diversity of systems while remaining concrete enough to engage with the realities of the structures they exchange. Niklas Luhmann regarded the distinction between form and medium (or ‘medial substratum’) to be the most general and fundamental distinction in communication. I propose that this distinction is also applicable to the ‘integration’ of social systems, psychic systems and computers: ‘When we speak of “communication media”, we always mean the operational use of the difference between medial substratum and form. Communication is possible only–and this is the answer to the improbability problem–as the processing of this difference’ (Luhmann, 2012: 116).
The ‘form’ is George Spencer-Brown’s (1969) two sides (and their separation) of a distinction between marked and unmarked states; while the ‘medium’ is Fritz Heider’s (1959) idea of a set of loosely coupled elements into which ‘things’ or ‘forms’ can be imprinted, producing ‘a difference that makes a difference’ (Bateson, 2000: 459). The distinction between form and medium thus provides what Maren Lehmann (2018) calls ‘the first serious sociological calculus (p. 88)’.
This sociological calculus has been relevant to every human society since the differentiation of psychic perception and social communication, highlighting their mutual selectivity. While speech, writing and printing reinforced this selectivity, electronic media now compel perception and communication to merge their perspectives in order to process and navigate data effectively.
The distinction between medium and form allows sociological theory to conceptualise the next society as one that, in every operation, simultaneously generates an unstructured abundance (or ‘chaos’) of potential meanings alongside the singular issue it momentarily focuses on. This mirrors the very definition of meaning–always a relationship between a specific meaning and an overflow of other potential meanings (Barel, 1989; Luhmann, 1990b). However, this perspective goes beyond phenomenology by integrating a systems-theoretical view of operations. Rather than being purely experiential, meaning is now framed within cybernetics and systems theory (Luhmann, 2002), where operations both produce and engage with paradox. The interplay between communication and perception, in which medium and form mutually inform each other, is inherently paradoxical: one side remains open and fluid, while the other solidifies and becomes identifiable (Deleuze, 1990). This paradox does not simply exist–it is actively communicated, and through this process, the next society differentiates and reproduces itself.
A medium/form calculus, or the communication of the paradox of no meaning without its own overflow, accommodates the interpenetration of social and psychic systems and the computer by replacing the religion of oral society, the cosmology of ancient society and the philosophy of reason of modern society with a new notion of increasingly complex and incompatible reality. Human society is discovering a planet to which it is ill-adapted. The burning of fossil fuels is driving industrialisation, urbanisation and ecological disaster in terms of both climate change and biodiversity. The ‘form’ of our society is unsustainable. Its ‘medium’ needs to be explored anew. The ‘paradox’ is that the data space that produces predictive data is considered inadequate. The ‘new knowers’ (cyborgs) of the Novacene (Lovelock, 2019) will only help if the next society manages to contradict itself while knowing that it needs forms to explore a medium of communication and perception different from that of modern society.
Forms are unstable. Contrary to an old-European tradition which regarded forms–including the transgression of boundaries they enable–as a guarantee of stability (Städtke, 2001; Urbich and Wellbery, 2024), Luhmann (2012: 241, 243) emphasises that, even in ‘modern’ society, forms should be considered unstable, whereas the medium in which they are formed remains stable. Not without irony, Luhmann (2000) speaks of an ‘iron law’: ‘Forms must therefore, but this does not save them forever, take the form of a (recognisable) structure. Thus an iron law applies to the medium of meaning and to all derived media (language, for example): the unused is stable, while the used is unstable. The great advantage of this solution is that it allows the systems that possess it to adapt temporarily to transitory situations. They can thus become involved in a more complex, temporarily unstable environment. Once they have adapted to the environment, they do not remain stuck in it’ (p. 21, DeepL’s translation).
Unstable forms create structures that function as ‘boundary objects’ (Star, 1989), not only between social systems, psychic systems and computers but also within these systems, enabling shifts in use and interpretation.
If there is anything stable in both ‘modern’ and ‘next’ society, it is the medium of meaning, which remains in constant flux. It is stable because it is presupposed and produced by self-referential social and psychic systems, whose ‘law’ of autopoiesis dictates that they reproduce perception by perception and communication by communication. An environment of complex ‘realities’ is encountered by systems whose self-reference is empty, except for their interest in continuation. The paradox of a stable instability is managed–both resolved and affirmed–by structures that duplicate the operations of these systems. There is no communication without meta-communication (Ruesch and Bateson, 1987), and there is no perception without trust (Luhmann, 2017). Yet meta-communication, like trust, underscores the contingency of communication and perception: meta-communication raises the very suspicions it seeks to dispel, while trust, once disappointed, generates mistrust that can be invoked at any time. Notably, both meta-communication and trust mark interpenetration with the other system–meta-communication relies on being perceived, and trust depends on being communicated. In this way, ‘realities’ can be incorporated, emphasised through symbolisation and suspected of being imaginary.
A similar duplication can be seen in the computer. Large language models are trained to ‘explain’ or at least to ‘certify’ themselves (Landgrebe, 2022), but this raises the question of what kind of ‘intelligence’ enables them to do so (Pipitone and Chella, 2021). Once again, accepting the ‘essential unknowing at the heart of our experience, and the hidden that makes explanations possible’ (Weinberger, 2022: 34) may be the better option.
Communication of digital data
The specific operation that produces and reproduces the next society is the communication of digital data. Like ‘values’ at the normative level (Luhmann, 2012: 247), ‘data’ function as a ‘connecting medium’ at the cognitive level. They enable social and psychic systems to ‘learn’ by linking world events. The communication of digital data is the communication of the difference between their form and their medium. Their form is that of an ‘interface’ between the algorithmic and the social, lending their ‘subface’ to computer programmes and their ‘surface’ to human perception, social use and cultural interpretation (Nake, 2008). Thus, the communication of digital data is always the communication of computable data. There is nothing stable about these data, except that they are subject to further computation and to different interpretation.
By stating their facts, data seem to exclude further computation and different interpretation. They present their views, define their moments and address their users, whether human or machine. Yet by including in their ‘form’ what they exclude by their distinction, they produce and reproduce the very medium of further communication. If modern society was a society that could potentially criticise the very communication at hand at any moment through the products of the printing press, the next society can potentially compute every communication at hand according to electronic programmes that link it to every conceivable control, be it social or physical, be it in space or in time. To distinguish the next society is to distinguish a society that adds a new layer to its present structure and culture. This new layer consists of an electronic infrastructure that intervenes in the way communication is produced and reproduced. My suggestion is that we will need to examine the structure of networks and a culture of complexity when conducting further research on the social and societal consequences of the introduction and implementation of digital media.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
