System One is a piece of software that takes the computer very seriously. Sixty years after its invention the computer is coming of age. It starts to actively take part in communication. It is no longer trying to simulate human consciousness but acknowledges another challenge which is to deal with the form of the social.

We offer sociological insight and sociological research to monitor what is going on. We rely on Niklas Luhmann's distinction between the three cultural forms of the literal society of Greek and Roman antiquity, the printing press society of modern Europe, and the computer society of our global era (see Niklas Luhmann, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Ffm. 1997, pp. 405-12; see also Dirk Baecker, Wozu Soziologie? Berlin 2004, pp. 125-149). Each cultural form is called "cultural" because it first of all has to deal with the surplus meaning offered by new mass media of distribution.

The introduction of writing means that society has to invent ways to deal with the problem that meaning is not just appearing and disappearing as in oral communication but is here to stay, to be memorized, to be relied upon when confronted with new meaning and thus to destabilize - to "displace" - a society fluid in present changes of meaning. Writing, for Platon, seemed to freeze society and thus to prevent it of its lifeliness and all forms of human responsibility coming with it.

The introduction of printing means that society gains possibilities to compare and critize manuscripts now being standardized and mass distributed well beyond the walls of cloisters and libraries thus putting all forms of classical authority in jeopardy. Add paper money, bonds, school certificates, leaflets, and newspapers and you immediately start to imagine how modern society went off for a form of social dynamics not in accordance with tradional ways of local knowledge and authority.

The computer is adding its introduction into processes of communication in ways which make it impossible for human users to know exactly what is going on, who is saying what, what sources are reliable and what sources aren't, or who is meant by certain acts of communication. The computer is adding its capacities of computing both to the content and the style of the meaning communicated thus deconstructing the ways to know our ways we were used to. ... read full article.