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This paper applies methodological relationalism, leaning on a pragmatist theory of action of classical Deweyan origin, supplemented among other things with Alva Noë's enactivism, to analyze the development of communication technologies as a part of human cultural evolution. Tool‐use and technologies are understood as skillful human activities that form hubs of organized activity in developed human communities. Appreciating the quite slow pace of evolution, the article adopts, all told, a two million year time frame. Six epochs of cultural evolution are distinguished, linked to the introduction of communication tools and technologies as skillful human activities that serve the members of growing communities in the ecological niche at hand. The first two epochs arose from forms of communication serving local, small‐sized hunter‐gatherer bands; the second couple arose with technologies apt for building nation‐wide communities and culture; and the latest two have been propelled by global communication networks, having an impact on billions of people. Finally, certain peculiarities of the presently unfolding World Wide Web epoch, connected in particular to this era's exceptionally efficient behavior modification, are compared with earlier epochs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

s Issues of communication and the possibilities for the transformation of perspectives through an experimental dialogue resulting in a mutual, open, receptive, and non-judgmental consideration of the other are addressed in this paper from transdisciplinary theoretical and conceptual standpoints. The warrant for cultivating this type of communicative ability is based on arguments resulting from the assumption of widespread confusion and conflict in intrapersonal, interpersonal, intergroup, and ecological relations across the globe. I argue that there are two distinct classes of 'reasons' for this proposed practice of dialogue. First is recognition of the need for human individuals to engage in a regular and systematic 'social maintenance' of embodied consciousness to forestall the continuous colonization of the past/future on the living present that embodied consciousness entails. Second is the teaching of a skill to creatively and respectfully engage with others in a mutual transformation of perspectives. This paper addresses the general problem of perspectives and reflexivity at the root of the communication phenomenon and by extension - to its scale and to its pathologies in individuals and collectives. It is argued that suspension of judgment, assumption, and habit (broadly) helps interlocutors to recognize the possibility of holding one's history in a tensional abeyance and to focus on the living present independent of habitualized and reified identities and the embodied manner in which we unconsciously carry ourselves as social or 'universalized selves' in social situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short reply seeks to clarify the concept of linguistic norm circles and to correct some misunderstandings of it implicit in Sealey & Carter's response. It also reinforces some doubts over their version of the linguistic system. Norm circles, it argues, provide an important part of the explanation for linguistic practices, but always in conjunction with other interacting causal powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]