Heart Gardens | Language Totems

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Transcript
Let’s walk on further. Allow me to introduce you to the Heart Gardens This is where people come to relax, heal and find meaning. It’s hard not to notice the Language Totems here. They recall the statues we used to have in the city, only these totems contain three language computers: the totem of the spoken word, the written word and the activated word. 

Researchers and artists use these language computers to study how the way we communicate and convey information helps shape our society.

In the Middle Ages, for example, it was the spoken word that dominated. All communication was social and personal. People had to meet physically to get to know and trust one another. Large organisations were built mainly on personal loyalty and a shared faith. 

The written word became more dominant in the Early Modern period since the invention of printing enabled people to disseminate knowledge more widely. Preserving information on paper gave a sense of stability and reliability that didn’t rely on personal connections. Newspapers, maps and paper money laid the foundation for a new kind of organisation: the bureaucracy. This enabled society to take on bigger and more complex challenges. Global trade, for example, better healthcare and the statutes, regulations and jurisprudence that enable a democratic state governed by the rule of law. 

The twentieth century saw the rise of the electric computer, which used a different kind of language: codes and algorithms that tell it what to do. In The Mastership Society this is called the activated word: a language of signs and symbols which a machine can read, allowing it to do its work without further instruction. An invention that enabled building autonomous learning robots, that anyone can work with. 

This left people with a choice: how and why would they continue working? Had robots stolen their livelihood, or had robots liberated people from having to do things that gave little satisfaction? 

The choice for The Mastership Society was clear: let AI take over soul-destroying labour so that people may have the freedom to develop themselves. With everyone receiving a basic income, the economy was transformed to make work meaningful for people, society and nature.

To learn more about how the spoken, written and activated word have changed our perspective on one another and the world, check out the MuMeWe, the Museum of Worldviews and Human Natures.