Humans cannot communicate; not even their brains can communicate; not even their conscious minds can communicate. Only communication can communicate. - Niklas Luhmann

By representing themselves as a system [the mass media ] generates boundaries with an inside and an outside that is inaccessible to them. They too reflect [or represent] their outside as public life, so long as specific external relationships, such as to politics or to the advertisers, are not in question.

Luhmann (1991) “Wie lassen sich latente Strukturen beobachten?,” in , Peter Krieg (eds.), Das Auge des Betrachters: Beiträge zum Konstruktivismus. Festschrift für Heinz von Foerster, Piper, München-Zürich, p. 71; cited in: Heinz von Foerster (1993) "For Niklas Luhmann: “How Recursive is Communication?” ". Translated by Richard Howe.

It had always been clear to me that a thoroughly constructed conceptual theory of society would be much more radical and much more discomforting in its effects than narrowly focused criticisms—criticisms of capitalism for instance— could ever imagine.