Computer culture: The meaning of technology and the technology of meaning

Troubling distinctions: a semiotics of the nursing/technology relationship

“…25 Both nursing and technology have historically held equivocal meanings, serving as signifiers, signified, and the referent systems by which signs become meaningful to any group. 28,29 …”

“…25 Both nursing and technology have historically held equivocal meanings, serving as signifiers, signified, and the referent systems by which signs become meaningful to any group. 28,29 Signs signify largely by means of three related processes: metaphor, metonymy, and opposition. Metaphor is signification primarily by similarity and analogy, as when nurses are likened to angels.…”

“…Indeed, as one nurse put it, this cybernetic system (meaning the nurse) performed work better than electronic devices themselves and 'without having to buzz, click, or beep' (pp. [29][30]. 37 The ICU nursepictured as the head and hand of a womanwas a 'monitor', 'programmed with education' and 'turned on' at the bedside (p. 29).…”

Retrofitting Technology to Nursing: The Case of Electronic Fetal Monitoring

“…Alternatively, and a more historically accurate reflection of the relationship between technology and change, is the view that whatever influence a technology has on practice is "not pre-given but (rather) is realized in practice" (Timmermans, 1998, p. 148). Any one technology holds multiple meanings to various human users who see its potential for serving particular ends (Jensen, 1993). A technology is a fairly closed book by virtue of its physical design and hardware limits.…”

Nursing, technology and the millennium

“…All of these papers comprise what Jensen described as studies of technology‐as‐culture, or the investigation of technology as a ‘realized signifying system’ (p. 297). 3 Adapting Peirce’s triadic sign‐model to the semiotic study of technology, Jensen 3 proposed that technologies can have three different semiotic functions: as object (or the ‘second thing’ to which one refers), but also as representamen (or the ‘first thing’ that stands for a ‘second thing’) and as interpretant (or the ‘third thing’ through which the ‘first thing’ can be understood to refer to the ‘second thing’) (pp. 298–299).…”