Metalogue: The Future of Collective Thinking

If we consider "thinking" as a cognitive process dealing with awareness, attention and process of factual, emotive and conative types of information, then we may characterize "collective thinking" (CT) as an interrelated cognitive process of such functions occurring among several individuals.

Last May (3-7), an interesting conference was held in Stockholm, Sweden. It was the eighteenth annual international, interdisciplinary conference on the fundamental question of how the brain produces conscious experience. Sponsored and organized by the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, other organizations like the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research supported "Toward A Science of Consciousness" conference by their scientific boards (more information available at: http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu).

The topics and issues discussed at the conference were too many to be covered in this short blog post, but it was amazing that the word "collective" was a key term among the submitted articles. It seemed that there was a deliberate tendency among the researches towards research on human's collective thinking, consciousness, mind and mental behavior. I felt that it was better to rename the conference in this manner: "Toward A Science of Collective Consciousness"!

Meanwhile, a dispassionate evaluation of my academic conduct at college this summer concerning the impact of my dialogue posts on my personal career and life, showed new changes at least in my learning behavior compared with my past educational conducts. I have become more crafted with CT requirements. This idea ignited my mind and made me write this post on the future of CT.

Bibel (2004) believes that the processes of CT have not changed much over the last 2000 years; from let’s say an assembly of nobles in the antic Athens to the board of a 21st century company. It is still based on the talking of single individuals (nowadays with the help of PowerPoint presentations), each at his/her turn, and the others listening. It is well-known that in this style of debate the information transfer is extremely poor. So we may need a stronger shape of thought expression that can be realized through "dialogue".

Jens Allwood, a linguist at Göteborg University studied the role of "dialogue" as a behavior exhibiting CT having a premise in mind: "collective thinking" is a real phenomenon and it occurs in dialog (Allwood, 1997). He believes that language is an instrument for collective activation of thinking. According to Allwood, dialog can very well relate to and perhaps even take place on a low level of intentionality and/or awareness. Through the intimate connection between dialog and CT, collective thinking can also be factual, emotional, volitional and occur on many levels of intentionality and awareness.

In a broader effort, William N. Isaacs studied the same topic in the light of organizational learning at MIT. He got a constructive idea with dialogue. He used it as a means of creativity and suggested that "people may find it hard to talk together using the rigid categories of previous understanding. The net of their existing thought is not fine enough to begin to capture the subtle and delicate understandings that begin to emerge. This too may be unfamiliar or disorienting. People may find that they do not have adequate words and fall silent. Yet the silence is not an empty void, but one replete with richness." (Isaacs, Center for Organizational Learning).

Rumi, a 13th century Iranian poet, captured this experience:

Out beyond ideas of rightdoing,
and wrongdoing;
There is a field,
I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.

In Rumi's experience, the world is too full to talk about; too full to use language to analyze. Even in the richest dialogues, the words may not accomplish their information transferring function successfully and as we expect so. In this case, we may experience a higher level of CT that may be called "Metalogue".

Dialogue may have few words to describe such experiences, but increases the possibility of conversation that embraces subtle meaning, instead of words merely pointing to it. Isaacs calls this kind of experience "Metalogue" or "meaning following with". Metalogue shows a conscious, intimate, and subtle relationship between the structure and content of an information exchange and its meaning. In this sense, the medium and the message are linked. The processed information conveys as much meaning as the content of the words exchanged. Metalogue deals with human's creative side, a kind of creativity that may find meaning in a collective silent world.

Given the limits of words we use to transfer our desired meanings and the ultimate nature of Metalogue that is beyond conventional information transferring conducts, the future of CT is a matter of breaking current thinking and communicating paradigms. Metalogue is on the path of progress and it will be evolved to a level in which conventional languages and spoken-written words will become more or less futile. On that level, meanings will be transmitted by new means such as mind waves or mindwares.

I don't know how long it will take for us to reach that level of scientific-technological progress, but I'm sure the growing enhancement of current multimedia capabilities that have made our writing and speaking functions less valuable (compared with what we did in past years) will finally transform the way we communicate our collective thinking with each other. There will be a meaningful silence over the world full of unprecedented meanings and thoughts.

References:
Allwood, J. (1997). Dialog as Collective Thinking, In Pylkkänen, P. & Pylkkö, P. & Hautamäki, A. (Eds.). Brain,Mind and Physics. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
Bibel, W. (2004). Converging Technologies and the Natural, Special Interest Group Report for the European Commission via an Expert Group on Foresighting the New Technology Wave, p. 11.
Isaacs, W. N. Taking Flight: Dialogue, Collective Thinking, and Organizational Learning, A report from the Center for Organizational Learning's Dialogue Project, pp. 1-16.

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Alireza Hejazi is a freelance futurist. He is the founder and developer of “FuturesDiscovery.com”. Hejazi is a member of WFS & WFSF. He is currently an MA student of Strategic Foresight at Regent University School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship. His works are available at: http://www.futuresdiscovery.com.