As mentioned in the previous posts,
the Dig into Data Project (DiDP) is more about modeling and understanding of
the literal culture evolution across apparently-different cultures. Such
modeling not only allows to spot and highlight the key literal works and writers
of a specific culture in a specific period of evolution time, it provides a
mean to show that all literal cultures are to some degree “the same” at least
from an evolution of literature (enlightenment) perspective. We frame such a similarity
in the form of a culture-agnostic literature evolution mechanism that
would be projectable on all cultures along their enlightenment period of time.
The outcome of the DiDP would be a
great achievement because it provides a new angle in understanding the literal cultures,
and especially in hinting that all cultures are in essence the same. This would
lead to implicit but significant conclusions that could have application beyond
the DiDP.
Despite these applications, the goal
of the DiDP would stay highly scientific because in the real world there is no
isolated culture evolving by itself. Although in the past the level and speed
of communications among cultures has been much less than that of today, a single
spark initiated by a translation of an influential manuscript form a culture to
another culture, which has been ready and eager, would be sufficient to start an
onset of a significant evolution in receiving literal culture. Such an ignition
could be seen as a big bang effect. Observing such interactions at the level of
cultures is a critical understanding in order to accelerate literal evolutions and
co-existence across the globe. The significant challenges would be in alignment
of evolution periods of time of different cultures and also in modeling cross literal-domain
interactions.
The DiDP database is rich in terms
of cultures and literal domains. However, the number of domains, the periods of
time, and also the geographical locations are so sacred that the chance of
having a big bang event would be highly small. Enlarging the scope of the data
to cover all literal data across the globe would be interesting and an ultimate
goal. However, considering the resources available to the projects, this seems infeasible.
What that seems to be a good test bed to evaluate the concept of the Inter-Culture
Evolution could be a small world of a finite number of literal cultures
that have been highly interactive among themselves in the form of various
exchanges and migration, and also share the same greater geographical area for
a considerable period of time. If the period of time of the available data of such
a small world is long enough to capture a few of the inter-cultural big bang
events, we can spot and highlight those inter-cultural evolutions using a
moderate amount of research resources. Those highly intense inter-cultural interactions
could be then studied and analyzed in deep and details in order to develop
robust models for inter-cultural exchanges and phenomena. Such models can be
leveraged at various levels toward a sustainable future of co-existing but
highly evolving cultures across the globe.
Interestingly, in another project
that we have been involved, i.e., the Indian Ocean World Project (IOWP), a very
clear example of a small world has been studied for a long time. Serval
cultures, such as Arabic, African, Chinese, Indian, Japanese, and Persian
around the Indian Ocean have shared the same small world of ecology, economy,
and people. This Indian Ocean World (IOW) has been highly dependent on
significant climatic phenomena, such as the tropical Monsoon climate, and
therefore some sort of ‘synchronization’ could be expected among its cultures.
Thanks to the IOWP, a considerable amount
of data, not limited to the literature, have been collected and hosted by the
participating organizations in the project, and particularly McGill University.
Such a huge data could be combined with the robust methodologies developed in
the DiDP in order to open new horizons of understanding and insight on the
cultural evolutions of such region, which could be then leveraged toward
homogenous development across the IOW and also across the globe despite continuous
increase in shortage and scarcity of resources, such as water.
We use the term Literal Culture
World to name this combination of the DiDP outcomes and the IOWP data. Literal
Culture World could be seen as a step beyond both Culture-Agnostic Evolution of
Literature and also Global Economy of the IOW. Although we will start with the literal
data, such a combination will not be limited only to literature.
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