Can we imagine forms of culture and thought outside the tradition of writing?
So far we have considered thought as a writing machine and held the book as the main learning tool. Contemporary philosophy with Derrida challenges this assumption, and “opens a new kind of questioning about metaphoricity, writing
and on spacing in general.” According to Freud, the alphabet is a “pulsional renunciation,” which removes senses and drives by creating the linear-not spatial-experience of reading.
In general, philosophy is vitiated by forgetting the body of knowledge, that is, the alphabetic technique, and its fundamental role in the development of thought. The philosophical, as well as theological or pedagogical tradition, has so far failed to properly consider the importance of the “signifier”-the alphabet, the technique of phonetic writing-versus the “signified”-the content of the book. With Artificial Intelligence we are now facing a momentous transformation of the technique of thought development.
Lifting our eyes from the book – for 3,000 years the main tool of school education – we see and inhabit the space around us.
Spacing in Derrida and Heidegger points to a different, broader and more open foundational dimension than the phonetic-metaphysical system initiated by alphabetic writing and Greek philosophy. Heidegger draws a different existence for “mortals,” a different embracing of spaces and maintaining oneself in them. For Heidegger, the world must access a new unity: the “mirror play of the simplicity of earth and sky, divine and mortal.” Unity originates in squaring the square, in caring for the world, as saving the earth, welcoming heaven, waiting for the divine, leading mortals.
Beyond these philosophical reflections, it is possible to begin to imagine the forms of an immersive culture: intelligent installations, generative metaverses, dialogic museums are just some of the many immersive cultural experiences that will be enabled by the technologies of virtual reality, augmented reality, and the metaverse, integrated with artificial intelligence. New immersive memory palaces will be built, symbols of a new civilization in the making, in which storytelling becomes spacetelling, organized and enjoyed in three-dimensional space.
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