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One of my most thoughtful blogfriends, Dave Schuler, is worried about the downstream cultural effects of a creeping cognitive reliance on visual media:. A selection from different posts on the subject by Dave:

“I Can Read a Passage in a Book 20 Times and It Doesn’t Click”

More On Visualcy

The Visual Imagery Society

The old methods of handbook and lecture don’t work anymore-the new crop of trainers can’t learn that way. They need visual training-simulations and hands-on. The performance of the new trainees was characterized in the feature as “improving”. No word on whether it’s come up to the standard of their old-fashioned literate predecessors

Not only are the arguments not subject to logical refutation, logical refutation may not be comprehended by those for whom visualcy is the primary communication modality.

What I find most concerning about this trend is that developments in government paralleled the transition from oral to literate societies. Divine and semi-divine chiefs and monarchs were replaced by representative government. Is bureaucracy the analogue in government of visual imagery as a dominant communication modality? Chaos? Autocracy? The only notable developments I’ve seen over the last couple of decades are an increasing tendency in the Western democracies towards bureaucracy as the operative form of government and a greater tendency to follow charismatic chiefs, the societal modality that John W. Campbell characterized as “barbarism”.

I’ll conclude this speculation with questions rather than answers.

• Is visual imagery overtaking the written word as the dominant form of communication, especially for communicating new knowledge?
• If so, what are the cognitive implications of the change?
• What are the social and political implications of the change in cognitive behavior?

As it happens, I have another thoughtful blogfriend, Dave Davison, who is a foursquare enthusiast for emergent visualcy technology. Davison was, if I recall correctly, involved in the development of some of the ambient devices on which Schuler opined.  A few representative posts from Davison:

MuralCasting – Improving ROA (Return on attention) -corrected 2.8.08

Logic + Emotion: Developing an Experience Strategy in 4 Parts

Too many ripples in the pond?

The problem with “visualcy”, as I interpret Schuler’s posts, is if it were to become a successor and replacement for the Western culture of  “literacy” that stretches back, with sporadic interruptions, to classical Greece. Visualcy, in the hands ( or eyes) of someone who has never learned to think logically or coherently in a textual format, is a dangerous thing as it powerfully lulls them into a false sense of comprehension. Visualcy, used by someone with the requisite analytical cognitive skills, would be a powerful tool for efficient data compression, synthesis and communication. From personal experience, I can attest that well constructed visual models can be a gateway to understanding for some of my students.

The underlying problem to this discussion is that too large a segment of our population never become truly literate as they pass through our public education system – they are disjointed “scanners” of words rather than readers who habitually fall prey to the maxim of “Garbage in, Garbage out”. What non-emotionally driven thinking they attempt based on information from a  text is often from significant misunderstanding; and if they do not have the good fortune to have teachers who can engage them with mathematics, they might never pick up logical reasoning at all.  Math instruction, I am convinced, despite my own struggles with that subject, is one of the “thin blue lines” holding our civilization together.

What to do ? The attractiveness of visual imagery would appear to be a neurological constant of our brain structure and the potential of visual analytics as field can hardly be ignored so our fallback must be attention to fundamentals. Education has to be a process that ends for the great majority in minds that are trained to think critically and creatively. We are maxing out our legislative strategies on societal and institutional accountability here and will have to contemplate greater emphasis on student and parental responsibility for the education of children than we have so far been willing to countenance.

Blogfriend Dave Schuler brings in the important economic and scientific limiting factors to the discussion:

“World production of U₃O₈ is roughly 47,000 tonnes. The spot price of uranium is about $90/lb. Conseqently, the total world production of natural uranium (the yellowcake we’ve heard so much about) is about $10 billion annually, much of which comes from Canada, Australia, and Kazakhstan with lesser amount produced in Niger, Russia, the U.S., and other countries.

Since the prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapons development program is much on people’s minds, let’s use Iran as an example.

Annual Iranian oil revenues, the government’s main source of revenue, are roughly $50 billion annually. BTW, there have been some signs that, despite the rising price of oil, the Iranian government’s revenues from oil are actually falling due to decreasing production (for various reasons). Add to this the draw on the treasury created by the profligate policy of subsidizing gasoline which, while creating a certain amount of political peace, has the unfortunate secondary effect of increasing the use of gasoline in the country and decreasing the amount of the government’s revenues available for spending on nuclear development programs, whether peaceful or weapons development.”

Read the rest here.

Big Hat tip to Dave Schuler for these posts. Read the introduction here.

Jason Sigger of Armchair Generalist. Sigger has, for those who are unaware, a military background in CB warfare issues. An excerpt from his post:

“US Nuclear Weapons Policy”

“I am not going to have a long discussion on the proper role of nuclear weapons. If you want that understanding, go read Thomas Schelling’s “Arms and Influence.” I do want to outline the broad brush strokes of a progressive nuclear weapons policy that has a few main points of departure: 1) the US government will always need nuclear weapons as a strategic deterrent against other countries that have nuclear weapons; 2) the US government needs to minimize the possibility of a future nuclear conflict between other nations as well as between the United States and another major power; and 3) there is no such thing as a tactical nuke.

….US policy makers need to stop the practice of “deliberate ambiguity” as a diplomatic threat against other nations who are doing something the US government doesn’t like. We ought not threaten non-nuclear nation-states with nuclear weapons, as we did against Iraq in 1991 and 2003. Retaliating against chemical-biological weapons with nuclear weapons is not justifiable; this counters basic Cold War (Schelling) logic of rational deterrence. The message needs to be clear and simple: If you have nuclear weapons, you are now a target on our Single Integrated Operational Plan.

As for the second point, the US government needs to continue to pursue a strong nonproliferation strategy with both nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states. Part of this strategy must include acknowledgement that Israel has nuclear weapons, and that they are a part of the problem within the Middle East. I fail to understand the coy game played by US and Israeli politicians on this point. Until open discussions begin, how can we expect Iran, Syria, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia to discard the ambition of becoming a nuclear power? It’s basic deterrence theory again. I’m not suggesting that Israel give up its nukes; far from it, I want Israel to openly declare that they have nukes and will use them as part of its national strategy. This tact hasn’t hurt relations between the US government and India or Pakistan so far. “

Read the rest here.

Andy of Non Partisan Pundit:

“21st Century Nuclear Strategy”

“To begin with, I’d like to point out and discuss three important premises that I believe are critical:

1. Nuclear strategy is not isolated and is part of, and integral to, broader US strategy.  Although the concept of nuclear strategy as a mere portion of overall US strategy appears obvious and self-evident, debates on nuclear policy are still too often divorced from the “big picture” strategy debate.  It is my contention that nuclear policy differences among experts are those in the “blog tank” not primarily rooted in disputes over nuclear policy itself but represent disputes over broader US strategic policy and the role the US should and will play on the world stage in the 21st century.  Added to this mix is what “New World Order” the international system will morph into over the coming years and decades – a process which, in my view, is still ongoing.  Therefore, I would suggest the debate on US nuclear policy is really a debate on larger, more complex and highly-interrelated issues.

2. Related to the previous premise is my contention that the US lacks a coherent and defendable strategic vision or plan for the 21st century.  Without a coherent vision it becomes difficult to formulate coherent and integrated policies and nuclear policy is no exception.  The US appears to me divided and reticent after “winning” the cold war, unsure of where to go or what to do next beyond incrementalism and maintaining the status quo, particularly since interventionism is not working out so well.

3. Nuclear weapons cannot be 100% verifiably eliminated. The problem with eliminating nuclear weapons entirely is one of trust and verification.  For relatively new nuclear states, this is a difficult prospect, for the US, Russia, China, and others it is exceedingly difficult.  Ensuring that a country does not have a few weapons or material hidden away is virtually impossible given the nuclear history and accounting practices of many of these states.  Therefore, any agreement to eliminate nuclear weapons will require a relatively high degree of trust sans verification – a condition which states of all stripes will find difficult to accept.  This concern, however, can be partially addressed through limiting delivery platforms, as I’ll discuss later.”

Read the rest here.

I’m looking to have my contribution to Cheryl’s discussion up sometime late tomorrow night or possibly Friday.

Please see the introductory post here.

Blogfriend Dave Schuler lost no time in taking up Cheryl Rofer’s challenge. An excerpt from his post at The Glittering Eye:

“Nuclear Weapons Policy in the 21st Century”

“Let’s begin this discussion with a premise and some facts. First, the premise. Nations work actively and rationally to extend their power and influence and to avoid losing power or influence. That’s consistent with Napoleon’s dictum cited above: the two great levers are fear of loss and hope of gain. Now the facts.

Worldwide there are approximately 32,000 nuclear weapons (source: Nuclear Threat Initiative). Of these more than 30,000, roughly 95%, are in the possession of either the United States (roughly 10,000) or Russia (roughly 20,000). For the United States if all nuclear weapons everywhere were to magically vanish from the face of the earth very little would change. The U. S. would continue to be the wealthiest country in the world. It would continue to have the biggest GDP in the world. It would continue to have the strongest military in the world. It would continue to wield great social influence. It would continue to be the world’s sole superpower.

The situation is different for Russia. Without nuclear weapons Russia would continue to be an enormous, sprawling country with a populous heartland and a remote sparsely populated hinterland, not unlike Canada in that respect. It would have a GDP roughly that of Canada’s, too, although with a significantly larger population it would be a good deal poorer than Canada. It would have no warm water ports which substantially limits its ability to project ports.

Although its role as a regional power is inescapeable it would not be a world power.

Russia will never relinquish its nuclear arsenal. To do so would relegate it to third class status. “

Read the rest here.

A GLITTERING EYE ON RICHARDSON’S NEW REALISM

Dave Schuler has a superb examination about Governor Bill Richardson’s major foreign policy essay in the Harvard International Review.

I can applaud the serious effort by Richardson, a former high level diplomat, to address foreign policy in a thoughtful way, even though I agree with Dave that many of Richardson’s proposed solutions do not logically address the strategic trends he identifies ( thought they probably appeal to regular, middle-class, Democratic activists if not the wackiest of the wingnuts).