Messages and values in the age of machine learning

Messages and values in the age of machine learning: From postcards to social media If Stanisław Pietraszko were to update his essay "Messages and values" today, would he write about social media instead of postcards?Superficially, the analogy between postcards and social media seems unavoidable.After all, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and other social media transmit short messages of text, images, and/or videos characterized by the same feature that Pietraszko noticed distinguishes postcards from letters: "the public availability of the verbal text" (and other content). 1One can assume, then, that Pietraszko and other scholars of the "axiosemiotics" of the postcard such as Zdzisław Wąsik 2 would today also wish to discuss social media forms whose "excessive" and "redundant" performativity (to use Pietraszko's terms) make them objects not just of information but also, and often primarily, of culture.After all, the visual "filters" that users frequently apply to their Instagram or TikTok posts are perfect examples of such excess or redundancy.There is almost no informational and only cultural value, for instance, in making oneself look like a cat.Yet one doubts that Pietraszko would have been content with just a superficial comparison of postcards to social media.His theoretical analysis was systemic in its aims, focusing on postcards to formulate a general relation between "messages and values" based on the difference between the semiotic function of information and the axiological values of culture.One surmises that today Pietraszko would want to pursue the same kind of systemic analysis by looking deeper into the systems of information and culture behind social media-a level of analysis, however, that poses challenges to his axiosemiotic approach

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