1. Introduction: When Perception Becomes Mediated
In a previous post, I introduced the distinction between perceptual and cognitive instantiation—two fundamental processes through which we bring meaning into being. Perceptual instantiation involves the construal of meaning through direct sensory input, while cognitive instantiation draws on memory, imagination, and symbolic systems to actualise meaning in the absence of immediate perception.
But in the 21st century, our experience of the world is increasingly mediated by technology. We do not simply perceive or imagine; we stream, swipe, scroll, and simulate. A FaceTime call with a friend, a livestreamed protest, an immersive VR simulation—all are examples of technologically mediated experiences that blur the boundary between perception and cognition. In such cases, the perceptual input is neither unmediated nor imaginary; it is transduced through digital systems, shaped by semiotic conventions, and interpreted through the cognitive resources we bring to bear.
In this post, I want to explore a third kind of meaning-making that emerges from these conditions: hybrid instantiation. This refers to the process by which meaning is instantiated by a meaner through semiotic systems via technological mediation—where perception is extended, displaced, or simulated, and always already shaped by symbolic systems. Hybrid instantiation does not replace the perceptual/cognitive distinction; rather, it reveals the ways in which those modes of instantiation are fused in technologically saturated environments.
2. From Eyewitness to Livestream: Mediated Perception as Perceptual-Cognitive Fusion
In an age of ubiquitous digital media, we rarely experience events purely through direct perception. We watch a protest unfold not from the street corner but from a social media feed. We see a friend’s face not across the table but through a screen. These are not purely cognitive acts of imagining, nor are they unmediated acts of perception. They are technologically shaped perceptions—and their meaning depends on the semiotic systems through which they are construed.
Consider the livestream: we see and hear something as it happens, but our perception is framed by a platform’s interface, by the act of curation, by hashtags, likes, and comments. The raw sensory data is shaped before it ever reaches us—and so is our construal of it. We instantiate meaning not only from what we see or hear but from how it is presented, labelled, and contextualised.
These experiences are perceptual in that they involve sensory input, but also cognitive in that they rely on our symbolic resources to make sense of mediated content. Meaning is not directly “taken in”; it is actively construed through a hybrid process of seeing and knowing, sensing and interpreting.
3. Virtual Reality and Augmented Instantiation
Virtual and augmented reality technologies push this fusion even further. In a VR simulation, we are immersed in an artificial perceptual field. We feel as though we are there, even though the sensory stimuli are entirely simulated. In AR, digital layers are projected onto our physical environment, transforming what we perceive into a mixed reality.
In both cases, the experience of “presence” is generated through technological simulation—but the meaning of that experience still depends on our ability to construe what we are sensing. A virtual forest becomes meaningful only because we bring to it a history of perceptual and symbolic associations: the feel of walking through trees, the cultural meanings of wilderness, the conventions of game environments. Meaning is instantiated not by the pixels themselves but by the meaner, through systems of interpretation.
These experiences are not less real—they are differently actualised. They are instantiated realities: semiotic constructs grounded in technological mediation. The perceptual is not absent; it is simulated. The cognitive is not detached; it is embedded. And the boundary between the two becomes increasingly porous.
4. AI as a Mirror of Cognitive Instantiation
Interactions with generative AI, such as large language models, introduce another twist. Here, the user instantiates meaning in response to outputs that themselves instantiate meaning from immense, distributed symbolic systems. These systems have no perceptual grounding of their own, yet they generate texts, images, and conversations that we interpret as meaningful.
When we engage with AI, we are not perceiving in the ordinary sense, nor are we imagining from nothing. Instead, we are encountering outputs of cognitive instantiation—machine-generated language shaped by patterns in human discourse—and responding through our own cognitive and sometimes sensory processes. The AI is not a meaner in any full sense, but it becomes a medium through which symbolic potential is reconfigured and re-instantiated by the human participant.
This creates a layered loop of instantiation: human symbolic activity forms the training corpus; the model generates symbolic outputs; the human construes meaning from those outputs using semiotic systems. The locus of instantiation is still the meaner, but the conditions of meaning-making have been transformed.
5. Hybrid Instantiation: A Third Mode of Meaning-Making
To account for these layered, mediated experiences, I propose the concept of hybrid instantiation. This is not a new category in opposition to perceptual and cognitive instantiation, but rather a description of how those two processes become entangled in technologically mediated settings.
Hybrid instantiation refers to meaning that is:
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actualised by a meaner,
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through semiotic systems,
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via technological mediation,
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where perception is extended, displaced, or simulated.
It accounts for experiences like:
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Seeing a friend’s face through a phone screen and bringing past emotional associations to bear.
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Watching news unfold online, mediated by framing devices and platform logics.
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Navigating a VR environment where perceptual stimuli are fabricated but interpreted through familiar symbolic systems.
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Reading AI-generated text as a semiotic artefact shaped by human symbolic histories.
In each case, meaning is instantiated not in spite of the mediation but because of it. The technological layer is not neutral—it is an active participant in the construal of experience.
6. Implications: Attention, Alienation, and Agency
The emergence of hybrid instantiation has implications for how we attend to the world, how we construe reality, and how we exercise agency in meaning-making.
When perception is constantly mediated—by screens, algorithms, simulations—our attentional economy shifts. What we attend to, and how we make meaning from it, becomes contingent on technological affordances and constraints. We may find ourselves alienated from direct perception, yet also expanded in our capacity to imagine and interpret.
This raises questions about agency. If meaning is always instantiated by a meaner, what happens when the conditions of instantiation are outsourced, shaped, or pre-structured by technological systems? We are still the meaners—but the systems we use shape not just what we mean, but how we mean. Recognising this does not diminish our agency; it highlights the responsibility we have to reflect on our semiotic tools.
7. Conclusion: Languaging in a Mediated World
Meaning is never simply found in the world; it is always instantiated. In a technologically mediated world, this instantiation becomes hybrid—blending perceptual simulation and cognitive construal in new and complex ways.
Whether we are navigating a virtual space, interacting with an AI, or watching events unfold through a screen, we are not passively receiving information. We are actively instantiating meaning—through layered processes that draw on sensory data, symbolic systems, and technological mediation.
Hybrid instantiation invites us to rethink what it means to experience the world. It reveals that meaning is not just in what we see or know, but in how we construe experience through the tools and systems available to us. And it challenges us to remain reflexive, attentive, and deliberate in our role as meaners—especially when those systems become more complex, more immersive, and more opaque.
In the end, technology does not give us meaning. It gives us new conditions for instantiating it.
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