Communication in its most basic form--the sending of signals and exchange of messages within and between organisms--is the heart of evolution. From the earliest life-forms to "Homo sapiens," the great chain of communication drives the evolutionary process and is the indispensable component of human culture.
That is the central message of this unique perspective on both the biological evolution of life and the human development of culture. The book explores the totality of communication processes that create and sustain biological equilibrium and social stability. The authors argue that this ubiquitous connectivity is the elemental unity of life.
Introducing a new subdiscipline--evolutionary communication--the authors analyze the core domains of life--sheer survival, sex, culture, morality, religion, and technological change--as communications phenomena. What emerges from their analysis is a brilliant interpretation of life interconnected through communication from the basic molecular level to the most sophisticated manifestations of culture.
Challenging the boundaries of conventional approaches to cultural analysis, this is an original and engaging view of evolution and an encouraging prognosis for our collective future.

Communication Games is a new and radical interpretation of the relationship between culture and communication. It explores the idea that culture and communication studies should be seen predominantly in relation to struggles and conflicts within the social arena. It criticizes the conventional heritage of the social sciences and humanities. Culture and communication are conceived not merely as means of integrating social actors, but as semiotic ways of providing fitness indicators that allow for the resolution of competition between individuals. From the perspective of Peircean semiotics and the Darwinian understanding of life processes, Communication Games redefines culture in terms of Darwin's notion of sexual selection. Moving on from the realization that sexual selection creates individual organisms with conflicting interests, Communication Games emphasizes the contribution of game theory to semiotics and communication studies. The book demonstrates how cooperation and shared conventions eventually emerge, and how conflicts are resolved through the display of costly and inflated signs. It is from these inflated signs and the escalation of excessive messages that cultures gain a certain degree of stability. Communication Games proposes a new way of understanding culture, communication, and semiotic exchange in terms of game theory.

It has been said repeatedly that contemporary culture is the culture of images. Mythologies of Vision faces the challenge of producing an argument on how to interpret images. Using a semiotic approach, this study offers an alternative to traditional conceptions of image making, arguing around historical interpretations of art, perspective, photography, as well as individual artists like Giuseppe Arcimboldo, Marcel Duchamp, and Rembrandt. Mythologies of Vision is a critical redefinition of images as products of conventions.