1.1. Every being is an element in an environment, recognizing and understanding others by their signs. In whatever form then, conversation unavoidably follows, gathering together communities of mutual interest and dependency. 1.2. Billions of years ago a conversation between different beings fused them together. From the cells that resulted our species evolved. 1.3. conversations turned our primate tribes into what for us became the entire world; the rise and fall of us today arising still from our conversations. 1.4. Survival and meaning-making, life and semiosis, are co-extensive.

2.1. Society is fundamental; constructed by both allies and predators it has been the builder of complex organisms and provides their means of survival. 2.2. Society is the focus of the environment for all those in our kingdom. Through the frames of meaning it provides, our ontogenies are developed and constrained. 2.3. Our bodies are societies, and evolve as co-operatives of cells rather than as dictatorships of our brains. Only half of the cells in my body have my DNA; the other half are bacteria without which I would struggle to survive. 2.4. In effect, the identity: I, is an illusion, a necessary emergent quality of a unique alliance of animal and bacterial cells.

3.1. Despite our awareness and its self-interest in survival, from our very first moment like birds in the trees we call out. 3.2. Although being heard is often a call to diners as well as for dinner, calling-out reveals what is good for us as well as who is not. 3.3. Intrinsically, life is about connecting not codes; communicating is not merely in our genes it is their function. Biologically, culturally, and psychologically, communication drives our evolution.

4.1. Like those of other animals, our young are driven to seize the powers that adults have, co-operating and competing with them as they do with each other. 4.2. Whatever children may be taught at home, they build on what they experience in their environment; mimicking it and trying it on for size. 4.3. In their ontogenies, as children communicate with their environment their experiences aggregate, forming a cultural framework which then supports as well as constrains their development. 4.4. Children learn through their cultural frame to recognize relations, those whom it is easy to empathize with and others, those species and groups with whom such a thing feels quite impossible.

5.1. Through the course of evolution, society has proved to be life's best defence. 5.2. Through the fear of social exclusion and the comfort of inclusion, beings are driven to accommodate their differences and engage with others.. 5.3. Intentions integrate expressions, and expressions derive from intentions, but the value of a being to a society is determined by their expression not their intention.. 5.4. We construct our expression and perception, of thoughts, feelings, sight, taste and sound; adapting to the environment in which we are conceived so that others will see us as we need them to.

6.1. meaning is not intrinsic to words; they are just midwives. Conceived in our intentions, meaning comes to life only in perception. 6.3. From light to sound, from shape to form, in every kind of sign, beings perceive and express meaning uniquely. Ambiguity only kills machine code; it is intrinsic to natural language —over the millions of years, if it were otherwise, it would have vanished along with our tails. 6.3. Ambiguity makes deceit possible but by requiring the resolution of doubt also serves to defend against it, shepherding us closer together.

7.1. As our species focused on signs and symbols we developed new media. From handprints on cave walls to theatre, text, and photography, an industry of broadcasting has evolved. 7.2. By filtering information and mediating individual choice, broadcasting has increasingly orchestrated our conversations and transformed our social intercourse. 7.3. Adapting to the new social-media, individuals are now gathered together behind screens, interacting with one another as nodes in the ecosystems of virtual societies. 7.4. Through a propaganda of the everyday, the neural networks of new social-media construct infospheres. The cognition and behaviours of individuals and societies now adapt and develop to these new environments.

8.1. conversations gather us together. constructing not only virtual environments but also those that provide for our physical needs. 8.2. Building that common sense in which we feel safe and at home, conversations assemble us into societies and cultures. 8.3. Our minds develop within social frames that our conversations construct; our psychological needs fed by our successful adaptation to them.