2024 Vol. 15 №4

The article presents a reflection on Alexander Fedorov's project aimed at analysing the future and the model of production. This model facilitates the correlation of factors related to subjectivity and sociality within the process of future production. Notably, the work emphasizes Alexander Fedorov's assertion regarding the pivotal role of children and childhood and the typology of actors involved in this process. The proposed concept and model establish a fertile ground for further interdisciplinary research. From the perspective of social semiotics and pragmasemantics, shaping the future emerges as a form of meaning-making and institutionalization, unfolding through a series of interfaces that enable interaction across socio-cultural practice contexts. In this framework, subjectivity is identified as a crucial interface for such interactions. Moreover, a comparative analysis of natural and artificial intelligence underscores the complex potential inherent in this research problem. While human beings possess advantages stemming from bodily experience, sexual dimorphism, and other forms of vitality over artificial intelligence, the future is largely grounded in this vitality, exemplified by the essence of childhood. Consequently, the question of management possibilities and the ethical dimensions of future production, as well as the balance between permissible and impermissible means employed, becomes particularly salient.

It is known that almost all hereditary information about the innumerable characteristics of a multicellular organism, including the human body, is encoded in a certain way in the nucleus of a fertilized egg. The principles of the unfolding of genetic information in the development of a multicellular embryo have long attracted the attention of both biologists and representatives of various sciences. While molecular biologists concentrate on the infor­ma­tional and cybernetic aspects of the storage and transmission of genetic information, the au­thors of biosemiotic studies insist on the specificity of biological signs in these processes and on the special nature of biological texts. We focused on the information aspects of these pro­cesses and, in order to demonstrate the analogies between them and with linguistic-semiotic concepts, we describe the problems of complexity and hierarchy of genetic mechanisms for the implementation of genetic information in embryogenesis, as it is seen in systems biology.

This article demonstrates that the concept proposed by Alexander Spirov reflects the ongoing paradigm shift and inspires new approaches in biosemiotics and semiotic pragmatics. The shift involves a move from describing coding languages to describing languages that regulate them. This requires considering the agentivity (or quasi-subjectivity) of sign systems, which leads to a scenario where the sign system functions as both its subject and object, thus reviving Peirce's idea of the sign as a quasi-mind. An analysis of the primary regulatory mechanisms shows that regulatory codes: (a) create specific conditions for coding, (b) govern and control coding processes, and (c) consist of the same elements as coding elements, although are interpreted differently. Their interpretant is not amino acids or proteins but the processes of activation or suppression. Communication and information processes at the biomolecular level allow pragmatics to be understood as semiotic operations associated with intra-system self-regulation and the system's external interaction with its context (environment). The processes within a system, as described by Alexander Spirov, create contexts and interfaces for interaction between different systems. This implies that a system of signs can act as an agent that communicates or interprets, akin to Peirce's notion of the quasi-mind. This understanding has the potential to significantly reshape the current approaches to pragmatics and semiosis.