Through the course’s readings, it has come to the point where I’ve questioned myself how we’ve made it to this point as a species. When or where did we draw the imaginary line between civilization and savages.

In order to analyze the difference, it is important to define the boundary. If we consider Fabian’s concept of the savages as seen through Latour’s eyes, the real difference between us and them, it’s in the way we visualize them (Latour, 1986). It relies in the fact that by having the capability of encoding information in an immutable medium that allows mobility, visualizations become the means to fight atemporality (Latour, 1986). They allow the creation of a present time and space. The line was literally drawn, encoded in a written print, an image or whichever visual artifact, yet by having a present, a past and a future were also created.

Considering that human neural architecture has remained constant for the past thousands of years, it is visualizations rather than higher cognitive capabilities which allowed the transition from savages to civilized. Visual artifacts have provided humans with the ability to have different worldviews at their fingertips, and more importantly to be able to contrast those perspectives against each other (Latour, 1986).

Returning to Latour’s argument that the root of visualization is directly linked to maintaining and acquiring power over others. Progress in visualization lead to graphism which in turn allowed the rise of more complex visualizations which could now encompassed previous ones. A phenomenon that has accompanied technoscience. New scientific papers are reviewed in a bigger publication which can now speak for everyone under its umbrella. Theories, fields, disciplines rise as a means to explain more, creating a cycle of discovery and visualization. Each new representative, wielding the power provided by those whose ideas now are being summed together.

History becomes portrayed in Atlases which become mobile means for education for the new generations.  The whole machinery for progress was built upon the foundations of visualization. This notion perpetuates the evolving nature of visualizations and allow to learn from humanity’s past mistakes. By selecting what has worked in the past, the civilized are able to adapt successful methodologies and to shun flawed ones.

Yet the selection for progress itself becomes problematic. Considering that technoscience is a social construct and that all knowledge is situated, it becomes important to question how knowledge is chosen for preservation and learning. Scholar work in terms of anthropology, sociology and history has allowed to identify the outcome of certain actions and to determine which course of action lead to said outcome. By doing so, knowledge can be selected and applied for successful results in future situations. Analyzing this “filter” opens the following questions: What if the selection mechanisms for progress not only allow humanity to selectively learn from its mistakes, but by doing so, the same fiber which accounted for failure is also embedded within that knowledge? What if new knowledge has been tainted by the failure of the selection mechanisms which allowed it to be born in the first time? What if the only way to fight the spread of doomed progress is to end visualizations altogether? What if the savages are actually more civil than the civilized?

References

[1] Latour, Bruno. (1986). Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands In Long, E. et al, Knowledge and society: studies in the sociology of culture past and present: a research annual (pp 1-40). Greenwich, Conn: JAI Press.