Software -- whether executable programs, music, visual art, liturgy, weaponry, or what have you -- consists of bitstreams, which although essentially indistinguishable are treated by a confusing multiplicity of legal categories. This multiplicity is unstable in the long term for reasons integral to the legal process. The unstable diversity of rules is caused by the need to distinguish among kinds of property interests in bitstreams. This need is primarily felt by those who stand to profit from the socially acceptable forms of monopoly created by treating ideas as property. (1)
We usually perceive the world as a unified whole in spite of the multiplicity of sensory inputs. However, a single 'master area' in the brain to which all these inputs converge has not been found, so how is the coordination of signals underlying coherent perception achieved? One suggestion is that transient synchronization of neuronal discharges acts as an integrative mechanism to bind widely distributed neurons into a coherent ensemble underlying a given percept or cognitive task.(2)
In pursuing the various E-Lekhtic themes of education, dialectical thought, international development, net governance and so forth, my conviction is
that they each reflect how one 'unconsciously' thinks; how the brain conjures coherence from
the motley flood of synaptic inputs. Perception, proprioception, recollection, dream, fantasy, visitation --
all 'make sense' or rather are made into sense by the same algorithm. Take one datum, and then take another.
By their similarities and differences shall ye know them again. (3)
If each 'datum' is itself a sim-dif composite, that is unsurprising but irrelevant. If one is 'larger' and is construed as 'context' or 'ground' for the other, that too is beside the point. Nor is it a real mystery is why consciousness so convincingly takes only one thing at a time -- and this takes us to the level of language and social 'constructed' reality: against the primeval totality of undifferentiated chaos in the Mind, the Word indeed stands at the Beginning. Names are the trapdoor by which sim-difs are identified as 'things': two become one.
Admittedly its difficult to construct compelling examples. Anything you already know already has names, so explaining that meiosis consists of litosis and synapsis is not going to demonstrate that naming the latter make the former comprehensible. On the other hand, if I describe something entirely new to you (say, how to put bits of window blind and silica gel caps together), neither is it clear that calling the assemblage 'four identical miniature conical leaky buckets' helps the construction, much less the comprehension, process very much.
But in fact there is an experience we share, here and now, which neither of us have seen before: the construction of the meaning of this page (can we give it a name?) But the page itself is not runes or Middle English or hieroglyphics; you didnt 'discover' it by accident nor did I pick a font at random (even if I play with the words sometimes). That is, you expect to be able to 'read' it, as I expect to be able to make it readable; but further, within that 'high-level' undifferentiated context, it is by naming me the Writer and you the Reader, that we define the process as being one we 'recognize' or 'understand' or 'are familiar with' or 'know what to do with.'
Now it may not be usual to think of it this way before; for most literate folks, 'of course' the text was written by someone -- but who cares? Differentiation, schmifferentiation, its still the same page. This is to say, to the individualistic point of view, the context 'disappears' -- just as the social milieu which provides the larger textual/ English lang context is 'taken for granted.' This 'blind spot' is admittedly widespread, but that hardly gives it special status as the only view; in fact, the Internet increasingly contains non-textual material, and non-English text so that such givenness -- and individualism -- is distinctly 'problematised.'
A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a direct result, markets are getting smarter -- and getting smarter faster than most companies. [Explaining to yesterday's leaders why the Net is changing the very nature of business,] Markets are conversations. (5)It is by way of constructing a coherent basis of interpretation of this so-called interactivity that I write -- and, I assume, that you read. On this basis, the issues I have listed all are instances, applications, rather than discrete fields of expertise -- and when they are describable in the same language, then one can talk about 'education' as a 'developmental' process as fluently as about development or internet governance as an educative process. More, those who has glimpse this subconscious working (regardless of the 'language' in which they interpret it) can do educating and developing, not just talk about it.
The 'difficulty' with examples, for instance, is the difficulty of getting out of the reader/writer, authority/ obeyer, buyer/ seller perspective by which culture has accomodated the physical limitations of information channels. Each advance over handshaking, one-to-one, f2f communication -- town crier, newsprint, Pony Express, telegraph, radio, film -- certainly increased the speed of propagation, but left the major premise undisturbed: regardless of the event, reportage (documentation, interpretation, contextualization) of the event is provided by a minority to the majority. In each case one could refer to the message content as 'information' because the range of possible authorities (e.g. sovereign, author, 'producer,' etc) was a very short list, easily held in common with 'anybody who was anybody.'
The Internet appears to call this premise into question (but, at the time, so did each of the other technologies) -- not because 'everyone' actually is or even will be in direct contact with one another, but because the possibility, the paradigm, resonates with us. That is, the 'other' has reappeared: the 'bottleneck' model is just that, no longer the unquestioned, unquestionable 'hegemonic' reality -- and indeed, the immediate response has been to question not the information but the authority by which it has been issued.
The pursuit of the ramifications of this reappearance is, of course, the 'information revolution.' But to judge by the headlines, only the economic, administrative (in which I include 'education'), political and industrial spheres are being revolutionized -- the realm of human activity is apparently immune (except to 'unscrupulous' (unauthorized) spamsters, pornographers, racists, con artists, and so on). How can the 'infrastructure' be so affected and the social milieu itself remain untouched? Isnt that most human of all interactions, communication, in for overhauling, too?
Certainly, the speed (and with it, the reach) of speechifying has increased, but what about style? Look around the Internet, however, and all one sees is the same old demagoguery, the grandstanding monomanias, the scathing blustering ignorance of 'getting along' that characterized every other medium. In the absence of the 'short list' of authorities, everyone takes the chair to propound solutions to their favorite problems ('but its not *my* problem; I just have the answer!') -- and then complains that the 'real problem' is that no one listens to what they have to say. 'All chiefs and no indians,' one might say.
I agree, that's the problem, but I'm obtuse enough to then ask why, with all the technological power of CMC, we seem unable to address it. Could it be that years of indoctrination at the hands of 'trained teachers,' have taught us only to await an Authority, rather than to act collectively to bell the cat, and name the nameless?
