Part II : Modes of Meaning
Having become familiar with connective and architective interactions you should notice them at work in yourself and in the world around you. If you look very carefully, you will see that every event, every relationship in your life, every phenomenon you encounter, whether physical, biological or social, is composed of connective and/or architective interactions.
The phenomena you encounter will have meaning for you. They may be meaningful because they are useful, interesting, beautiful, valuable or even scary, but some of their meaning will spring from the connective and architective features of their interactions. For example, you may find value in having a unique identity or in having things separate from each other - which arise from architectivity - or you may get pleasure from the flow and interference of a wave play like music - which arise from connectivity; or you may find both kinds of meaning in a compound phenomenon.
I use the term serial meaning to denote the meaning that arises from the connectivity and architectivity of things. Of course we may find other meanings, such as the prices of things which would influence our purchase of them, or the sentimental values in family heirlooms.
Serial meanings arising from architectivity, like having a unique identity, I say are of the architective mode, while those arising from connectivity are of the connective mode. That is, I talk about connective and architective modes of serial meaning.
As I sit and write I happen to look up and notice some passing clouds and feel the breeze on my face through the open window - I momentarily skip into the connective mode of serial meaning from the architective activity of arranging words on a page.
For us, the main implications of serial meaning lie in the ways interactions are sequenced and arranged, in the patterns we discern and manipulate in these, and in the games we play with them. To give you an idea of how significant serial meaning is to us, some examples follow:
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