Memorial

Danish semiotician Peter Bøgh Andersen, author of A theory of com puter semiotics. Semiotic approaches to construc tion and assess ment of computer sy stems (1990, Cambridge University Press, updated in 1997), passed away on January 10, 2010, at age 64. His death came much too early. Family, students, colleagues, and the scientific world lost a scholar and friend of rare qualities and great independence, clarity, and passion. […]

We spent almost an entire day together. That is, Berit Holmqvist, Peter Bøgh Andersen, and I. It was in 1996, some months after my first meeting with Peter in Daghstuhl; and it was intended to afford a closer look into why semiotics would be of interest to people active in computer science or informatics. My argument (the computer is a semiotic machine) was not good enough—it did not have enough pragmatics attached to it. […]