Of Dinosaurs and Hyroglyphs

Last week I attended a workshop around inclusion and the starting point of the discussion was to make us aware of "the bias we are". That was a good eye opener and reminder of the fact that bias is part of us as humans and likely a successful contributor to our survival. And that we can actively work on removing bias from our decision making and acting.

But that's not what I wanted to write about.

11 000 000 informations per second

Pragya Agarwal mentions in her book "Sway - Unravelling Unconscious Bias" that our unconscious mind likely treasts 11 000 000 bits of information per second. She relates that then to the capacity of our conscious mind, being able to treat around 40 pieces of information per second.

I was curious and read up, how much information we can take in when reading - 40 words per second - and when listening - less than one per second.

No I am full aware of the fact that when we listen to a person, we do take more information in than the pure articulated language. We listen to the tone, the body language, undertones and so on. So in fact, listening to a person might not come out as bad, but still - we won't get anywhere near the 11 000 000 informations running through our unconscious reptile mind, per second.

In the "summer 2024" version of my AI Keynote I already suggested that the availability of GenAI enabled video and communication together with the impressive steps forward in augmented reality (try an Apple Vision Pro!) will likely have an impact on the way we interact with information systems: As all the capabilities are already available, it seems reasonable to me to predict that we will be able to have real conversation with information systems in the future.

Your ERP can calmly sit down at your table and you can discuss in a true conversation the current numbers. And you can live out your bias and have the numbers being presented by the grumpy controller avatar and discuss sales with the sleek sales person. Or switch avatars and observe yourself if your perception of the information will change.

Can we get around language?

Even then, language with one mere information per second, is an immense reduction in complexity, compared with the 11 million, and even with the 40 informations in our conscious mind.

Don't get me wrong, I love language. And the reason why I love language is that it's so much more than words. I am a firm believer that translation programs can not replace learning a language. And the 11 million-Info just gave me a reason for that belief: If I learn a language and start to master it, I start to think in the language. And not only in my conscious mind, which would mean that I translate. When I listen to or speak french, even with my german accent, understanding does not happen in my conscious mind - a language you learn taps into the unconscious.

So a mere sentence-by-sentence translation will never capture what you truly want to express, and language by itself is already a reduction of complexity.

But what if, with the help of AI and the upcoming technologies, we could overcome and communicate better, avoiding misunderstanding and truly expressing what we want?

Hyroglyphs

I like to spice up my presentations and for monday I was asked to chip in an overview about what an ERP system does for a customer, but where to start? Overall, it's not about the system, but about the processes.

Book keeping is a very, very old occupation and started when humans were able to capture information "on something". When it comes to written documents, there's testimony of pretty old, ancient, accounting. Like on papyrus.

To my surprise you can order papyrus online. I then abused the capabilities of textile transfer foil to transfer an image of an ancient book keeping record (imagined by AI, so it's of the quality of lorem ipsum text) to a papyrus roll. Surprisingly easy, I hope it gives me a nice first highlight in my presentation.

So, try to connect to the dinosaur in yourself who is relentlessly processing 11 million informations per second and enjoy the weekend!

Yours

Alex