The Mind Jell-O Problem

I had a teacher once that analogized the effort of grasping difficult concepts to nailing jell-o to a wall.  This has been my experience while trying to imagine the differences between primary oral cultures and those with literatures on a cognitive level.  Technology's impact has left very few purely oral cultures (we read about them in National Geographic with 132 speakers deep inside the Amazon rainforest), but there are an abundance of intermediates which retain characteristics distinct from chirographic (written) cousins.  According to Walter Ong's 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word, of the nearly 6800 languages in the world, perhaps only 102 have developed written form and 68 a literature.  


That's 1%.  

 







And this is significant because among the cultures with written languages, those which dominate the internet and to which I belong, the others languages, the majority it seems, are invisible.  Invisible in the development of ICT.  Not only do we ignore them, but even if we try to consider them, we find it nearly impossible to imagine how to un-think the visible, tangible qualities we associate with language.  Ong and others assert that these qualities profoundly alter the way we think, and the way of thinking for each type of culture becomes inaccessible to the other.  Assigning an alphabet to an oral language or putting symbols on a cell phone is the type of superficial solution (and chirograhic bias) which fails to truly address the cognitive aspects of orality and literacy.




How profound is this difference, and can we approach an understanding of the other?  

This cultural and cognitive divide has vast implications for designing ICTs for users across the globe that interface through written language but prefer another oral language.  For example, a user in Morocco (an intermediate oral culture) may be fluent in French, English, Darija (Moroccan Arabic), and Tamazight.  All of these can be technically be written, the first two would be considered chirographic while second two would be consider oral.  While there is no question that the user is literate, there is a question about communication preference.  Oral or chirographic?  The user's preferred mode for communication depends on several factors.  There is research which shows many users switch languages based on audience and context and even within the same text event.  Perhaps the technology makes the choice because it supports only certain languages or perhaps the user wishes to convey a certain identity through language.  Whatever choice the user makes, he or she must conform to a chirographic mode of thought.  How does this disrupt the intended message?  How does this impede the potential organization or analysis an ICT can provide?  I believe it does disrupt and impede, and that new developers from these cultures will soon start to change they way they design dramatically as a result.
 
The 'nailing jell-o to the wall' exercise:  Ong suggests we try to imagine a day without 'looking something up.'  The idea that language can be seen becomes unavailable.  Now, try to solve an intricate problem without writing the solution down.  (For me I just think about the methodology of my thesis, yikes).  How do you remember it?  He proposes for oral cultures you begin to pre-arrange your solution with mnemonics.  In addition, you do not engage in this process alone.  Thought becomes a dialogue or a discussion.  It is no accident that there are no individualistic cultures among oral cultures.  Finally, dissolve your attachment to organizing by categorization.  Sorting our thoughts by metaphorically dropping items into category buckets is not possible when language has no tangible quality. (if your mental jell-o isn't sliding down the wall, then you aren't trying hard enough.)  Instead, thoughts can be arranged acoustically, or perhaps with reference to a visual or emotional cue which occurred simultaneously.  When thoughts take on this shape, logical manipulation (the Aristotelian sort we practiced for argument), becomes impossible.  If A is B and B is C then A is C and all that.... very problematic without categories.  

This cognitive divide is particularly evident in the way we perceive time and space (an issue I've described in previous posts).  And almost entirely impossible to describe from alternate perspectives which is precisely why it is so important.  I recently had a colleague tell me he was entirely lost during my description of non-linear time and had no earthly idea how space and time could be thought of differently.  He is not alone.  And the fact that he couldn't un-think his own perspective is precisely the problem oral cultures encounter with chirographic based ICT.  The majority of cultures must do mental gymnastics in order to make sense of literate cultures' logic.  Current ICTs do not adequately support oral cultures' information preferences.

A distinct and important different between oral and literate cultures happens at the cognitive level.  The way in which thoughts are formed, organized, recalled, and manipulated is not the same.  ICTs are designed for the information concept of literate cultures.  ICTs could perform better for oral cultures if developed from their cognitive perspective.  The rise in video and voice tech shows promise to address this deficit if developers from oral cultures are involved.

Standards, Measures, and emoticons

How long did it take for businesses, practitioners and the academic community to incorporate Hofstede's work on cultural dimensions?  It was a pretty nifty idea in the business culture of the 1980s to assert that a spectrum of cultural values should play a role in decisions and workplace dynamics.  Because you can have a meeting in London and then a few hours later in Rio or even simultaneously via video conference, connecting with partners and clients, not to mention multi-national workforces assembling from migration, defining cultural elements in our interactions allowed for individuals to become more cognizant of culture.  

2 Interesting reads review the prominent role Hofstede's Dimensions have come to play in business communication culture. 

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions 30 Years Later: A Study of Taiwan and the United States
Ming-Yi Wu, Western Illinois University

A Quarter Century of "Culture's Consequences": A Review of Empirical Research Incorporating Hofstede's Cultural Values Framework

Bradley L. Kirkman, Kevin B. Lowe and Cristina B. Gibson

And of course you can go back to the source:

Culture's Consequences: Comparing Values, Behaviors, Institutions and Organizations Across Nations (2001) By Geert Hofstede

By today's standards, Hofstede sampled a thimble of individuals to represent 'world cultures' which he surveyed from IMB offices.  There have been many papers written about the shortcomings in methodology, as well as the vision he showed in developing the concept in the first place.  It has certainly endured, but perhaps that is because business loves benchmarks, and no other standard for this difficult concept, culture,  has emerged as a viable rival.

The workplace environment has changed.  Beyond the face-to-face communication that this measure was conceived to describe, the online interaction, even with webcams approximating face-to-face meetings, plays an enormous role.  Isn't it time to develop a measure of cultural context, a way to gauge those inherent qualities of communication which are so easily misunderstood across technologies even between users of the same cultural background?

The demand for this feature has superficially been filled by emoticons whose form and use are culturally derived, so they are not terrific at crossing cultural boundaries.  Perhaps compiling attributes worth leveraging as cultural translation guides could be done with crowdsourcing.  Or perhaps the algorithms tracking and stacking every digital breath we take could determine an index, something not static but informed by today's data flow, which would enhance translation of text and voice by adding context, background, and connotation.  This is a necessity of global communication we should be working towards, something beyond translation.

Visualizing Violence

This was the title of a call for papers I received recently: Visualizing violence in francophone Africa.   More and more researchers are taking an interest in aesthetics surrounding conflict.  In particular, from cultures where art is not Art, but rather the richest contributions on the spectrum of drama, music, literature, visual space, etc... Topics include:

• Cityscapes-- architecture and city planning post-conflict, especially to assert national or cohesive identity
• Urban murals to counter criminal activity

• Artists employing new technologies to combat post-colonial ideologies-- Do transient, mobile images transcend place and geographically-based descriptors, like African?

• Verbal art in transitional areas
• How does Human Rights manifest in literature, cinema, music, the internet?
• Negotiated space for art itself, the new museum in Africa 

These topic choices for research come from cultures where art is not separated from life in the way it is where I grew up.  I came to know art as something which must be visited in a museum or purchased or created with special intent.  If you encounter it free from these confines, it is considered, in my culture, bohemian, exotic, rare.  Not every culture shares this narrow view of art.  But there seems to be reflection about the power art has in our lives, and perhaps power enough to be considered in the range of approaches to dissolving conflict and relieving suffering.


Take a look at this feature in Al Jazeera English where they provide regular space to discuss politics and social issues from an artist's perspective.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/artscape/

In discussions with Congolese colleagues, I have asked how art might destabilize the banality of violence in the east.  Could there be an aesthetic format which shatters the cycle and engages communities at the level of emotion?  The history of censorship for artists' perspective on the human experience suggests the breadth of their influence.  In a recent conversation, a friend shared her frustration with the blasphemy laws in Pakistan.  While possessing the skills of a lawyer and a human rights activist,  she decided to confront this issue with her writing, her creative invention, her most dangerous weapon. 

These contributions will not immediately yield solutions, and for that reason they are difficult for many who work in policy and conflict resolution to incorporate into a strategy.  The impact of art is not easily quantifiable or even named; however, this impact is perceptible, felt, experienced, and undeniable.

Beyond battling with logical, practical solutions, communities should develop and support artists who bring emotional energy to these crucial subjects.... visualizing violence could dismantle violence.