Kristin Scott

I came across (albeit 12 years after the fact) a fascinating concept: That there is “no regulon in the semiosphere” . . .

I’m currently reading Paris to the Moon, an excellent novel by Adam Gopnik, an American who moves to Paris with his wife and son in 1995 and chronicles some of his five-year reflections of and experiences within this truly ineffable and elusive city. At one point, early in his book, Gopnik discusses a public seminar he attended at the Beaubourg, which includes a panel discussion between several intellectuals, including an unnamed economist and Jean Baudrillard. Gopnik, recalling a few moments in the conversation, reports that the economist proposes a theory: that “exponentiality is fatal” — in other words, without any sort of regulation, or what the economist calls the “Regulon,” the proliferation of any one particular biological life would eventually wipe out all of the rest (Gopnik 43).

Of course, Gopnik then muses that this was no revelation, given Darwin’s theory of natural selection. However, moments later, as Gopnik recounts, Baudrillard then declares that “‘There is no Regulon in the Semiosphere’” (43). Gopnik then proceeds to interpret Baudrillard’s comment for his readers:

“There is No Regulon in the Semiosphere. There is no way of stopping media signs from proliferating, no natural barrier to the endless flow and reproduction of electronic information [. . .] an abstract way of saying that there is no ‘natural predator’ to stop the proliferation of movies and television; they do overwhelm the world, and with it reality” (43).

The theory itself is fascinating, so I decided to do a search for the phrase “no regulon in the semiosphere” online in an attempt to learn more. I know that a number of Baudrillard’s conferences were videotaped and are accessible online, and I wanted to a) see if I could find this specific conference and b) find out more about what, if any, explanation Baudrillard himself offered for his own comment. Unfortunately, I found neither a video of this seminar, nor any substantial additional commentary on the theory.

What I did find, however, after inserting the phrase “Regulon in the Semiosphere” into Google, were four websites, one of which is apparently in Russian and is marked “This site may harm your computer.” The second site, that of a blogger, Dynagirl 5.0, simply suggests that she loved the sentence, but without attribution or explanation. While the third, some “research” site, merely quoted Gopnik’s interpretation, but without attribution for the actual concept or phrase itself, nor any reference to Baudrillard.

The fourth site, at Slashdot, offers an article written by Jon Katz in 2001, entitled “The Regulon,” which ends up misrepresenting not only the theories discussed within Gopnik’s book, but also arbitrarily assigning attribution to Gopnik via the absence of attribution to Baudrillard. Furthermore, not only does Katz utilize, word for word, specific phrases within Gopnik’s book without properly citing Gopnik, Katz never even mentions that Baudrillard was the one reported to have made the comment, and that Gopnik was then interpreting or explaining his understanding of Baudrillard’s comment; Katz essentially leaves his readers to believe that Gopnik himself came up with the theory. This misinterpretation, on the part of his readers, is evidenced in the multiple responses to his article, in which hundreds of people either attack Katz or Gopnik, applaud Katz or Gopnik, point out various flaws in grammar and composition, or attempt to argue Katz’s interpretation of Gopnik’s interpretation of Baudrillard’s concept, but without any mention of Baudrillard himself.

Thus, the whole concept is discussed out of context. How can one intelligently discuss the concept without taking into consideration Baudrillard himself, and his history of research and writing, as well as the concept of the semiosphere, which is nowhere (within Katz’s article) defined.

Nevertheless, while some of Katz’s responders argue that the popularity (or unpopularity) of certain pieces of information act as a regulon (i.e., what’s ignored simply “dies” in the semiosphere, while that which is most read, exchanged, shared, responded to, clicked on, etc. proliferates), few seem to recognize or discuss the unregulated proliferation of bad/wrong information, such as delivered, apropos, by Katz himself. Also, many of Katz’s responders seem to prefer to debate the concept by comparing, literally, Baudrillard’s theory with Darwinism and biological determinism; but the concept itself, which is well worth further discussion, seems to get lost. Baudrillard did not, according to Gopnik, compare his theory with that of the economist, but rather suggested that the economist’s comments “underlined” his own point about the unchecked (unregulated) proliferation of information within the semiosphere.

Which brings me to the next question . . . what is the semiosphere? Gopnik interpreted Baudrillard’s comment in terms of technology and media, but the semisophere, originally coined by the Russian semiotician Yuri Lotman, refers to the “whole semiotic space of the culture in question” (Lotman 1990, 124-125), a comment which is in itself one that can be discussed and debated for decades to come. And while Baudrillard’s comment, despite being made at least 11 years ago, may indeed refer most heavily to the media (as producing the largest number of “signs” within any given culture), the semiosphere is not limited to the media.

A search for “semiosphere” rendered over five hundred sites, too many to consider at the current moment for this blog entry; but it is a fascinating term that I’d like to further explore, both by itself and in relation to Baudrillard’s response that no regulon exists within this sphere.

If you are interested in learning more about the term “semiosphere,” here is a paper, entitled “Semiosphere and a dual ecology: Paradoxes of communication,” written by Kalevi Kull, from the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu, in Estonia, that attempts to describe the term via multiple paradoxes.