Informacinė, žinių aplinka: struktūra, veikimas

LINAS KONTRIMAS Vytautas Magnus University DOI: doi.org/10.35321/all84-17 INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE¹ ENVIRONMENT: STRUCTURE, FUNCTIONING 0. INTRODUCTION No one doubts that we live surrounded by a tangible, material environment. Its existence needs no proof; it is enough to look around at our immediate surroundings and touch the objects and people nearby. We likewise have no doubts about our inner, or, as we say, psychological and spiritual environment. Yet, unlike visible things, invisible ones require us constantly to learn about them and continually to create our individual or group-specific relationship with them. This is true of the human inner world, and it is also true of the social environment: it constantly changes as society changes; orders that once prevailed collapse or are reconsidered and newly evaluated. Perhaps the broadest environment, encompassing the greatest number of destinies, can be called history. Clearly, it too can be divided into countless segments: land, nation, state, person... The choice is ours. But this only shows that the subjective viewpoint is decisive here and (regardless of whether the subject is one person, one community, or one state. If such a viewpoint suits many or can offer explanations of environments applicable to the majority or over a long period, such a viewpoint—let us say, a theory—takes hold and remains valid for generations. This has happened with philosophical schools (theories), various insights of intellectuals, religions, and so on. ¹ I use both terms—informational and knowledge-based—but one should be used; it ought to suffice. My heart inclines toward the word “knowledge,” but would things then be understood more narrowly? Because, for example, in a social setting, nonverbal communication may be information to its participants, but not knowledge. On the other hand, knowing about specific means of nonverbal communication is both knowledge and information at once. 338 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIV Informacinė, žinių aplinka: struktūra, veiksmas Apparently, we must agree with the view that, just as in the physical sciences—which do not create new physical realities but, as wisdom increases, understand and discover new laws and principles—so too in the social sciences and humanities, as time passes and society changes, new theories and new explanations emerge so that we can better understand ourselves and the environments surrounding us. For example, technologies have created a specific environment today, a tangible one, but at the same time, if we narrow our understanding of technologies to connections, technologies have also encouraged the creation of an additional social environment, today inaccurately called social networks. Modern societies likewise live in dense informational or knowledge environments, quite different from those of, say, a person of the Gothic or Renaissance period. That environment did not arise in modern times, but it is precisely today that things emerging in the informational, knowledge environment and taking hold for longer or shorter periods affect our understanding and behavior. It is often said that we are what we fill ourselves with from the knowledge environment. The question is: has that environment now acquired a quantitative predominance, or does it also have qualitative differences? The easiest way to seek an answer is to try to understand and explain this environment. Of course, subjectively and in only one of many possible ways. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of fields and the informational, knowledge environment The field theory of the French sociologist and philosopher Pierre Bourdieu is a powerful theoretical model that allows the social environment to be analyzed very broadly. In trying to understand the all-encompassing informational, knowledge environment, I quite naturally turned to the Frenchman’s theory, who likewise sought a way to explain the world as a whole, uniting a great many differences and varieties. It was interesting to learn that “Bourdieu first applied the concept of the field precisely to literature, only later transferring it to other social spaces. In his assertion, the notion of the field in literary studies recalls that works are created in a specific social world with its own institutions and specific laws; at the same time, it articulates the relational autonomy and closure of artistic production in comparison with broader political, economic, and social structures of experience.”2 This is important to me because a kind of analogy operates here: with the help of information and knowledge, just as in works of literature, we arrange, group, and create ² Jakonytė Loreta 2015: Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of Literature. – Literatūra 47(1), 57–72. Kalba ir likimai / Language and destiny 339 LINAS KONTRIMAS our understandings and knowledge. All this may remain merely internal deliberation, or it may turn into an enacted work—a narrative, an opinion, and so on. How does field theory work, and what is important in it? As in every theory, it is important to remember the key concepts and principles of operation. For Bourdieu, a field is a system of social relations with its own logic of operation, structure, and rules. There are many social formations possessing such features, and therefore there may be more than one field—for example, fields of power, culture, art, science, politics, and so on³ The author was influenced by K. Marx’s theories, and therefore field theory contains quite a few economic terms; in places, it even echoes communist theories of class struggle. However, knowing this, and remembering that theories can inspire thinkers in very different ways, and knowing that Bourdieu’s object of study is different, it is not difficult to read and understand the logic and graceful conceptuality of the Frenchman’s theory. Thus, a field has its center, its core, where those who dominate are concentrated. A field also contains those who are dominated. The structure of fields constantly changes, and the dynamics of change are characterized by the concept of struggle: conflicts and competitive struggle are constantly taking place here, and their aim is to achieve victories—to accumulate power and capital. They are necessary so that one can dominate—that is, preserve the field’s appropriate status quo or change the field according to rules one has created. What is accumulated is various capital: economic (wealth, money, and so on), cultural (education, knowledge, and so on), social (behavior, connections, and so on). There is also symbolic capital (acquired position, reputation, and so on), which seems to combine the benefits provided by the first three. The concepts of cultural capital and symbolic capital were created by Bourdieu. Relations are very important when analyzing fields. Therefore, the theory introduces the agent—an actor. It may be a person, group, institution, and so on. Here Bourdieu introduces another concept he created—habitus. It is a set, a collection of beliefs determining an agent’s perceptions, imagination, thinking, emotions, needs, motives, and so on. Habitus is the result of socialization, acquired through the accumulation of experience; its content consists of dispositions accumulated through individual experience. It is apparent that Bourdieu’s model is constructed quite solidly, and that it can serve as a basis for explaining social environments. Apparently, the author himself would have incorporated the informational, knowledge environment into his system quite easily; perhaps he would simply have called it a field. All the more so because one of Bourdieu’s concepts, cultural capital, has knowledge as one of its components. ³ Pierre Bourdieu, Loïc J. D. Wacquant 2003: An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Vilnius: Baltos lankos. 340 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIV Informacinė, žinių aplinka: struktūra, veikimas However, here I make a different assumption: unlike Bourdieu, I do not call the world created by information and knowledge a field, but a separate environment. A field, although with difficulty, theoretically has boundaries. Environments usually lend themselves to description and study, but they have no boundaries. The contemporary world, both real and virtual, creates environments filled with information and knowledge, which themselves become systems that operate and create social environments. If we were to speak within the framework of Bourdieu’s theory, information and knowledge may be both a cause and a means; that is, they may be dominant or themselves dominated (for example, supplemented, distorted, and so on). Another reason why Bourdieu’s field theory currently only inspires the search for an additional way to explain the world, rather than following an already-created model, is that, unlike field theory, the model of the informational, knowledge environment speaks not only, and not so much, about social phenomena, but also about an entirely different reality created by media and filled with information, capable, with the help of technology, of existing at the same time as ordinary reality. 1. INFORMATIONAL, KNOWLEDGE ENVIRONMENT⁴ 1. a. Structure Unlike material or, for example, technological fields (I use the plural because we live in very different fields of things; they depend both on a state’s wealth and on the ability of a particular person or family to create a material environment), the informational, knowledge environment has no tangible boundaries. Digital and technological progress increasingly allows any person who expresses the will and desire to connect to countless layers of knowledge stored in virtual media. In such cases, it is no longer the mere existence of the knowledge environment that becomes important, but the desire to use it and the knowledge of where and what knowledge to seek. The informational, knowledge environment consists of three kinds of phenomena: 1) news; 2) facts: (a) proven; (b) doubtful; (c) unproven; (d) pseudo / false; 3) opinions: (a) substantiated (subjective and objective); (b) unsubstantiated (subjective and objective). ⁴ Further in the text, when describing the environment, I will use either both terms, “informational, knowledge,” or one at a time, but they will always function as synonyms, one supplementing the other. Kalba ir likimai / Language and destiny 341 LINAS KONTRIMAS Knowledge in its pure form rarely reveals itself to us; more precisely, we ourselves rarely use it in a pure form. And this is normal, because such use is determined by another important matter—the forms in which knowledge is accumulated. 1. b. Accumulation of Knowledge We are accustomed to thinking that knowledge is stored, for example, in encyclopedias, books, the content of media channels, and so on. Yes, it is stored there too, but in order to better understand the phenomenon of the knowledge environment, we need an additional, let us say, metastructure that would allow us to understand the informational environment and the circulation of knowledge more clearly. Knowledge is accumulated in three kinds of repositories: 1) changing; 2) transitional; 3) relatively stable. Changing repositories are all those in which knowledge circulates, exchanges, melts together—in short, changes and submits to change in both senses: it can be exchanged and it can be changed. An example of such repositories is language itself, media, the content of social media, and so on. Let us say that news often manifests itself and is stored, processed precisely in this repository (the word “medium” may also be used). Transitional repositories are subtler and less tangible. Examples could include attitudes, stereotypes, customs, and so on. Incidentally, opinions often persist precisely in this medium. Relatively stable knowledge stores include scientific knowledge, encyclopedias, and certain religious and cultural dogmas. Thus, facts like to be stored in this medium. Incidentally, one may ask what the difference is between some transitional and relatively stable repositories if, for example, we are speaking about certain dogmas and customs, while it also seems that we would like to see them gathered in either one repository or the other. The point is that, unlike recognizing and naming material reality (and even doing that is often neither simple nor easy), understanding and grouping phenomena in the knowledge environment is connected with much subtler matters. Let us say, with education, with the possibilities of exerting influence, with the ability to shape opinions and maintain them for a long time. Here is an example of a fact in the knowledge environment that is doubtful and probably false, based on a subjective opinion: my god is the only and principal one, therefore images and cults of god created by others have no right to exist. 342 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIV Informacinė, žinių aplinka: struktūra, veikimas A formation existing in the knowledge field in this form may be in a transitional repository—until someone confirms, refutes, or establishes it. Likewise, it may be in a relatively stable repository, because here it is maintained by the extensive, often total political and force-based control of the entire knowledge field. In repositories, the knowledge environment can acquire very concrete expressions. Then we say: cultural news, scientific knowledge, and so on. The situation will become clearer when we turn to the main operating principles of the informational, knowledge environment. 1. c. Operation of the Knowledge Environment I have already mentioned that the knowledge environment consists of three kinds of phenomena. Usually they exist in passive form, in pure expression. They are activated when someone begins to use those phenomena and construct knowledge environments of varying complexity and scope⁵. Thus, we have reached the point at which it becomes clear that the informational environment may be passive or active. It has also become clear that each of us can create (construct) our own knowledge environment or join one that already exists and become its participant-user, or perhaps its constructor. Here one assumption may be made: knowledge in passive form could quite possibly be called information, while activated information could be called news or knowing. The operation of the informational, knowledge environment is not complicated. All knowledge first appears as news. This is the moment when something unknown becomes known. Perhaps this is why in Lithuanian the word žinia is a passive form (one might say, stable, having acquired expression), while žinojimas, sužinojimas already indicate an active stage, a stage of operation. There were times when not very much news appeared in life, and knowing and the knowledge environment were sufficiently stable and static. Let us imagine a thirteenth-century jeweler. His knowledge environment was woven from rare news of the craft, community life, and perhaps one or another incomprehensible piece of knowledge about something distant, which a merchant had recently chattered about in a tavern. ⁵ I will not enter into the very interesting discussion of whether knowledge exists in principle and is real, say, when I am not thinking about it or do not know it. Nowadays we speak of collective knowledge and collective consciousness; in the past, in ancient cultures—for example, in yogic philosophy—it was said that there is a certain space containing all knowledge and understanding, and that one need only learn how to connect to it. Like radio waves: they exist without our intervention, but in order to put them to work, we need radio receivers. Here it is worth noting that raising questions of various kinds when we speak about human beings, consciousness, and nature is worthwhile and proper continually, whenever the conditions and circumstances of life and the level of knowledge change. Only in this way can something new be found, rather than going round and round in the same trampled circle, chained to a firm chain of knowledge. Kalba ir likimai / Language and destiny 343 LINAS KONTRIMAS The latter’s knowledge environment, although existing at the same time, would differ slightly. But it may be assumed that the circulation of news in such societies was not very intense. It so happened that in modern societies journalists became largely responsible for the “production” of news. Well, they do not construct the knowledge themselves, but they discover what has been constructed and present it through channels of knowledge dissemination. Journalism was based on verified, reliable news. Until recently, it was an important guardian and replenisher of the knowledge environment. This was also determined by the relatively limited number of knowledge-transmission channels. As their number increased—and if we include social media, we would have to say that the number of knowledge-transmission channels exploded to infinity—the number of news items exploded as well. It is important to emphasize that knowledge often based not on facts but on emotional content, and not necessarily reliable or verified, became the dominant form of news. Regardless of the content, the operating principle of the informational, knowledge environment in both those times and these has remained the same: first, knowing becomes news; later, or perhaps simultaneously, it becomes an opinion and/or a fact. If the operating principle of the knowledge environment is not complicated, why is it so difficult to understand where each piece of news exists, why do we understand the same things so differently, what makes us change established interpretations of knowledge, and so on? These questions are connected with other matters—with the actors of the knowledge environment (in Bourdieu’s term, agents) and the network they create, construct, and weave—according to one’s preference. 1. d. Actors of the Knowledge Environment and Their Networks The actors of the informational, knowledge environment should be defined and understood as all those who participate in the consumption of news, opinions, and facts and construct knowledge environments of varying size and complexity. It is entirely true: just as all the planet’s inhabitants consume the oxygen existing here, all people are actors in the knowledge environment. This trivial truth will not seem so simple when we examine those actors of knowledge and the knowledge networks they weave. It is precisely here that the greatest problems, misunderstandings, and conflicts arise, ending in wars—or perhaps in the one final war. A two-dimensional model would present an overly simple picture: imagine a circle, and let us call it the knowledge environment. Around this circle gathers a limited number of actors (because any sheet of paper is limited), connected to the circle’s edge by two-way arrows. 344 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIV Informacinė, žinių aplinka: struktūra, veikimas Let us identify those actors as follows: scientists, businesspeople, priests, journalists, us, NGOs, ministries, and so on. Let us fill the page as long as there is room. The idea is clear: the knowledge environment is created by all the actors listed and those unable to fit into a single sentence. The knowledge environment likewise affects the actors themselves. Why? Because the connection between an actor and the channel of the informational, knowledge field involves two-way traffic; once one’s information and knowledge have been transmitted into the shared environment, one is guaranteed to receive back not the same things, but things supplemented and changed by information and knowledge disseminated by other actors. Information wars are often lost precisely because such a two-dimensional model of understanding is applied. Those who control knowledge have been and will be inclined to keep users of this environment in precisely the two-dimensional model for as long as possible, because this makes it easier and simpler to manipulate individual or collective consciousness. In reality, however, the two-dimensional model does not exist. To understand it visually, at least a three-dimensional image is needed: imagine that in a gigantic figure there are many larger and smaller dots—the actors of the knowledge environment. They all spread a certain color or combination of colors around themselves—the knowledge network. Some actors are connected, and their network is brighter and larger (say, the content of a television channel or portal, the knowledge of powerful institutions, the knowledge network of a widely operating company, and so on). Nevertheless, fortunately, or sometimes unfortunately, not everyone can see these networks, nor can just anyone reach them. The informational, knowledge environment could be compared to the night sky: under certain conditions—at night—the brightest star, the Sun, withdraws from the field visible to us. Then we see other stars, the light they emit, and the Moon’s halo. The characteristic of the knowledge environment is that it has never had and never will have clear contours or boundaries; its own change, or the movement of actors through such an environment, may be boundless and uncontrollable. Ideally. In reality, it is different. In reality, a struggle over control of the knowledge environment is always taking place. Hybrid wars, fake news—these are all examples of that war for dominance in the informational, knowledge environment. 1. e. How Actors of the Knowledge Environment Operate The principles of operation will be easier to understand by drawing on an example—an analogy with physical space. Let us imagine a person who, while among others, occupies the most territory and is situated most comfortably: say, during a rush hour on a train or bus, sitting comfortably across two seats. Or here is another person who controls vast expanses of the finest land, enclosed by an impassable fence. In the past—almost always; today—sometimes—such occupation of physical space was a sign of distinction and victory. Kalba ir likimai / Language and destiny 345 LINAS KONTRIMAS Nowadays this may be important, but much more important is to control the knowledge environment, dominate it, and control its content, knowledge, opinions, and vocabulary. What, for instance, did the rating competitions among television channels that began long ago mean? The message sent is that we exert influence, that we are worth following and watching, but an equally important message is that we are in the knowledge environment of a world created by someone else. Electronic media and major portals have now taken over such competitions. The behavioral model of actors in the knowledge environment is always the same: to act primitively or highly sophisticatedly and seek to achieve absolute dominance. It is necessary to control not only the means of disseminating the knowledge environment but also its content. Whoever holds the monopoly on truth—or, better, on deciding what truth is—dominates the informational, knowledge environment. How and by what specific means some person or group begins to dominate the knowledge environment is a separate and always new field of research, because it is connected with a specific situation and specific people. We will never tire of doing this—figuring out and seeking why and how the centers of power in the knowledge environment ebb and flow. We will not tire of doing so because we are social beings, we are in a group, and each time the group, one of its members, or the whole changes, the situation also changes and requires new research. Perhaps this is why the social sciences, unlike the natural sciences, cannot aim to determine the laws governing society and record them as precisely and for as long as the physical or natural sciences do. The latter deal with a relatively immobile, static reality, whereas the social sciences will always confront a constantly changing research environment. If even one of its members changes, the entire environment will change: slightly if that person’s influence and participation were weak, but it may change radically if the person’s influence on the social environment was enormous6. Since knowledge environments differ—they may be personal, family-based, those of friends, a professional group, a state, and so on—the levels of operation will also differ. However, the general principles remain the same: first, the actors of the knowledge environment want to 6 The disappearance of one person from a state’s knowledge environment will not cause a major change; the impact of such a disappearance will be strong only for that person and their loved ones. But the departure of a prominent politician or a highly influential official or civil servant can radically reformat the knowledge environment. An elementary example of such reformatting is an election, when changed actors begin to create the political knowledge environment almost anew. It will always be different, despite our desire to surrender to the illusion that everything is the same, nothing changes—understand, it is not the actors but the political knowledge environment itself that will operate so that we can discern regularities, general principles, and rules. But that, as I mentioned, is only an illusion. The knowledge, informational environment is constantly changing, and our thinking and relationship to the changed knowledge environment must change as well. What we must learn is the ability to adapt continually to changing social environments; in the subject I am discussing, we must learn to swim and wave together with this fascinating ocean. 346 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIV Informacinė, žinių aplinka: struktūra, veikimas dominate the sphere of creating, presenting, and interpreting news. Such dominance makes it possible to gain control over content even without controlling the channels of knowledge dissemination. For example, I may not control a knowledge portal, but a message I publish on a personal page or social network may become the topic of the day or even the month across all the main channels. What is the difference between different knowledge environments? The larger the environment, the more complex it is; the more difficult it is to describe and detail it, grasp all its operating principles and laws, and recognize and name all its actors. This situation continues to trouble many social-science scholars who desperately try to capture the uncapturable: to stop the social flow, describe its laws, and analyze its actors. But the social sciences will never operate and, thank God, cannot operate according to the principles of the natural sciences. Dealing with different worlds, we must learn to assess them differently. This means not copying one another’s methods of work, but, on the contrary, nurturing differences and enjoying the opportunity given to us to look at the world through eyes that examine it differently, only later, while reflecting and analyzing, pausing to summarize the things that remain in our field of vision for a longer or very short time. Such, precisely, are informational, knowledge environments. Here is a simple, uncomplicated personal knowledge environment. It may contain several actors, say, a family. Or a microenvironment consisting of a couple; together they create a new knowledge environment. At first, their narratives and content flow, merge, and change; later, this may turn into an entirely new quality, or it may happen that someone’s narratives, someone’s presented news, facts, and opinions begin to dominate, or perhaps even overshadow the facts, news, and opinions presented by another person. Surely such a situation is not unfamiliar? Complex informational, knowledge environments, for example, political knowledge environments, are not so simple. Here, the number of both actors and agents is almost unlimited, and the means are varied. Nevertheless, the same process takes place in this environment: at a particular moment, actors emerge who seek to control the processes of presenting news, interpreting facts, and expressing opinions. The densest operation of a political knowledge environment is an election, when all efforts at dominance are concentrated on a single result. And, note this: while being in one and the same political knowledge environment, one politician-candidate will act in it and upon it quite differently from a political party. Since the purpose of this text is not to analyze in detail the operating principles of a knowledge environment and the behavior of its actors—such work could be the aim of another text and a specific study—it is now most important to emphasize that the aim of the actors in a knowledge environment is to influence the creation of news and to establish their dominance in the presentation and interpretation of facts and in the expression of opinions. Kalba ir likimai / Language and destiny 347 LINAS KONTRIMAS Incidentally, it is necessary to note that control of a knowledge environment is not necessarily a negative thing. On the contrary, an educated, open, and healthy society must and should ensure that knowledge environments formed for a longer or shorter period are managed (and they are always managed) or controlled (and they are always controlled) by the most decent and unselfish individuals or groups possible. For example, the knowledge environment that parents create for their children. To a great extent, such an environment is certainly created not to harm children, but to help them in every way. Or consider the informational, knowledge environment created through scientific knowledge—it too will be one in which even a single dominant source will not seek to exert a negative influence on the participants in the environment. Likewise, a knowledge environment can be controlled by negative actors. It is not without reason that in totalitarian states the authorities strive to control not only media channels and content, but also people’s thoughts, conversations, history, culture, and so on. Submitted on May 11, 2021 LINAS KONTRIMAS Vytautas Magnus University 23–604 Vlado Putvinskio St., LT-44243 Kaunas, Lithuania [email protected] 348 Acta Linguistica Lithuanica LXXXIV