Digital Dialect [part one]
It comes as an unfortunate surprise to learn that there is so little information about José Antonio Marina in English. Being one of the leading voices on the study of intelligence, the Spaniard philosopher definitively (and urgently) needs more attention in the English-speaking world. Paraphrasing the author, understanding human intelligence will determine what we know about ourselves which is essential to understand what we really are. In modern society, this question is central to grasp the mechanics of the individual and collective intelligence enabled by digital technology.
Marina’s first two books (which deserved multiple European awards) were dedicated to intelligence in its creative form. Teoría de la Inteligencia Creadora (the second one), displays a thorough scientific analysis through a delightful prose, demonstrating right and left brain thinking in equal parts. The book is a mélange of neurology, artificial intelligence, psycholinguistics, cognitive psychology, and philosophy, which blend to produce a theory that describes the creative process in a dense but entertaining manner, using two powerful examples: sports and arts.
An important part of the argument is the exploration of language as essential to understand and create meaning. Marina elaborates on the school of thought that considers language to be our prison due to the fact that we can only think what language allows us to think; adding that language is more like a halt which provides support in the production of meaning. Language is then where human beings unify information composed of images, values, voices, etc., and unload it into words.
In the context of our digital society, understanding our creative intelligence and the role of language is essential to come to terms with the real impact of the human-computer relationship and the implications to the great majority of people without access to this digital world.
The graphic user interface (GUI), is that element of modern computing that facilitates the dialogue between the human mind and the operations performed by the machine. It has evolved to a point that it blends seamlessly with the final result, rendering several layers of programming and mathematics invisible to us. The modern GUI has been feeding from language and its metaphors in the quest to become easier, more intuitive. Today the GUI could very well be considered some sort of language of its own, renovating and extending our “prison” and therefore allowing us to refine our own thoughts.
An attempt to digest Marina’s theories on human intelligence as part of the dialogue around the digital divide (the division between those with access to computers and the internet versus those without it), can potentially lead to uncover another dimension of the problem: A dimension that looks way beyond the economic, educational, and social aspects into a deeper division in the way we process information.
More about this subject soon.
