Notice how, if we are conceptually and cognitively able to step back and observe the forest rather than the trees, that the primary information system function here is that of the recursive self-propagation of soliton-like, continuously self-propagating waveforms in patterns of behaviour and thought.
Those artefacts that are produced at times of duress and stress, of gestalt system dissonance (a.k.a. war) are generally those that reinforce the patterned symbolic and abstract systems around which a cultural (as much as a cognitive or psychological) identity gravitates.
Times of war are times of self-definition because the act of self-definition generates the difference and abstract distance through which the gestalt information system of nations and minds is reproduced as a function of this dissonance, entropy and indefinitely-extensible logical and material relationships in or as coded patterns.
Observe also that successful cultural information system self-propagation is not necessarily a function of semantics (i.e. of meaning). It is a function of the extent to which that semantic bundle which is carried (and delivered) across a network of minds and artefacts facilitates optimal self-replication of the process of replication itself.
Daedelus Kite 