The semiotics of a phenomenological research paradigm for investigating the evolution and ontogenesis of cultural norm-systems in distributed virtual environments

In this paper I address philosophical and methodological issues posed by a study of how text norm-systems change when scientific authors write collaboratively over time in distributed virtual environments.The problem addressed is related to the fact that the qualitative demands on scientific authorship are steadily increasing. This has amongst other things to do with the increasing opportunities for dissemination and public discussion and criticism of such writing offered by the many new forms of communication media that we have been discussing here at this conference. There is a growing need to frame the development of text norms associated with scientific writing in a wider, more globally oriented context. Scientific authors will need to learn how to (re)interpret and (re)present their work for other groups of readers than their own peer academic text cultures; positioning themselves in relation to a much wider field of critical discourse than previously. At the same time research into the process of writing is making us increasingly more aware of the crucial importance that the sociocultural and interpersonal environment where collaborative scientific writing occurs exerts on qualitative aspects of this writing.In a large number of fields of the traditional sciences practitioners are gradually beginning to re-orient towards an inclusion of their work within the technologically mediated horizon of distributed virtual environments.Distributed text-based and hypermedia technologies are already in use by increasing numbers of scientists and other academics in developing, disseminating and discussing scientific knowledge and understanding. Examples of how e-mail discussion lists and distributed hypermedia systems like World Wide Web are being used in this way have been a subject of discussion in many of the papers presented here in Kassel. Various forms of simulation produced by means of three dimensional representations of object worlds known as Virtual Reality are another such example of how new technology is impinging on, and changing the textual norms of the scientific community. In my research project I shall be focusing mainly on a type of distributed virtual environments where authors can not only interact by means of writing to one another in real time, but also place texts in the virtual environment for other participants to read and, if they wish, take part in constructing the mediated life-world they are in by writing text descriptions of these environments which others can read as they enter them. Virtual environments of this kind are generally referred to as Multi-User Dialogues (MUDD's or MOO's)