Constraints on comprehension and communication: technology and intellectual property

Engaging with Elusive Connectivity and Coherence (Part #11)

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It is somewhat amusing and appropriate that the cognitive challenges to comprehension and communication of any subtle trinity of "categories" are reflected in the technology through which this is enabled. It is too readily assumed that this can be effectively done through speech or text, however these are enabled by internet communication.

Even the modalities of speech and text reflect somewhat incompatible preferences. Thus the concerns regarding governance articulated in the Gilets Jaunes uprising in France were almost entirely articulated verbally through the media and the unusually extensive commentary there over weeks. The uprising itself was enabled by a high volume of brief communications via social media. There was no implication whatsoever that diagrammatic or geometric articulation -- "mapping" -- would facilitate dialogue and avoid (seemingly endless) repetition.

Perhaps more extraordinary, and especially symptomatic, the well-recognized capacity of the intelligence services to "listen" and record such discourse was in no way matched by any capacity to transform sequential discourse into any more comprehensive and integrative mapping. This inadequacy was compounded by the repeated complaints of authorities that the Gilets Jaunes had failed to articulate the issues with which they were concerned -- suggesting that whilst the intelligence services were capable of "listening", they were totally incapable of "hearing" or "seeing" patterns of significance. Whilst the authorities were assiduous in deploying the "forces d'ordre" to constrain the Gilets Jaunes, they had no ability to deploy any cognitive "forces" to order preoccupations deemed to be such a fundamental challenge by authorities.

Such incapacity is reflected in the preferred modalities of governance in parliamentary assemblies world wide. There is endless scope for speech-making, especially in the antagonistic discourse between right-wing, left-wing and centre parties, assiduously recorded in text. However there is no capacity to transform that text into issue maps to enable dialogue of a higher order. In international assemblies, the irony is all the greater in that, enabled by technology, speech is simultaneously translated between multiple languages, as may be its transcription. There is zero capacity to reflect that simultaneously in cognitive "mapping languages" indicative of evolution of discussion of the theme -- or, more accurately, there is no motivation to use any relevant technology. There is a heavy commitment to repetition and enabling speakers to identify with their indulgence in it.

Efforts to reach agreement, exemplified by the UN Climate Change Conference (Katowice, 2018), focused intensively on reflecting such agreement in linear texts within which every word could be the subject of extensive commentary and dispute. There is no sense in which whatever is implied by "agreement" could be more adequately reflected in a variety of maps -- as is the case with the many boundary disputes. In the case of global issues, this is especially ironic in that the preoccupation is "global" and there is considerably technical familiarity with the advantages and disadvantages of contrasting "projections". Most decision-makers are now familiar with the value of zooming through map representations of different scales in order to "travel around".

A major constraint to comprehension is that all official communication, including that of supportive academic studies and business contracts, is required to conform to the technology of print media -- possibly in terms of length and page size. Images are typically deprecated for reasons of reproduction cost, and most notably because of issues of intellectual copyright. There is almost no scope for animations of any form -- themselves constrained by copyright in all probability. These constraints extend to use of web technology -- with some degree of freedom offered by speech. However (re)use of videos may again be constrained by copyright with which paywalls may be carefully associated.

A further technology constraint is with respect to size. This applies as much in terms of number of pages (or volumes) to make a case, most obviously a legal case, but also in terms of the length of any video (in terms of megabytes). An example of major relevance to global governance is the Trans-Pacific Partnership of over 5,000 pages in length. Comprised of 320 articles and nine annexes, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea is acknowledged to be one of the longest in history. A striking scientific example is the 15,000 page proof required for the Enormous Theorem (Stephen Ornes, Prize awarded for largest mathematical proof, New Scientist, 9 September 2011). Aside from limited willingness or capacity to engage with such articulations, it may be costly, if not impossible, to ensure their deliverability to all who might choose to explore them (Dreamables, Deniables, Deliverables and Duende: global dynamics "at the table" inspired by dining and wining in practice, 2015).

Further difficulties are evident with respect to systemic complexity and the capacity to engage with it, as argued separately (Comprehension of Numbers Challenging Global Civilization, 2014).

It is appropriate to argue that communication of insights of relevance to coherent global governance is subject to a pattern of constraints of which restrictive intellectual copyright and paywalls are very significant factors. The innovation which is the focus of the Triple Helix model is associated with a process whereby patenting is undertaken competitivelyto inhibit the innovation by others, if not to prevent it. It is fair to argue that there is a particular sense in which knowledge is effectively incarcerated worldwide to a degree that it is necessarily difficult to appreciate (Inhibition of creativity through incarceration of knowledge, 2018). This applies to many of the texts cited here and to images which might have been included.

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