Rhetoric and Rheology

Those whose words and deeds fly in the face of the ambient reality call to my mind a scene near the end of the 1986 movie Ruthless People (embedded at the bottom of this post).

Ambient reality? One way of conceiving of the present networked information age is to draw an analogy between 'reality' and matter. Units of information are analogized to particles of matter. (This analogy lives in the classical mechanical realm; this is not a quantum theory of Ruthless People, so think of bits and collections of bits (not qubits) as the information particles in the analogy).

Particles of matter may be found in different states (e.g., gas, liquid, solid), depending on the physical context. From Wikipedia:

A State of matter is a class of materials, usually solid, liquid, and gas. Plasma and also Bose-Einstein condensate are also states of matter, though less known ....

There is a classic general science description of each of the phases: A solid is a material that maintains its shape and its volume; a liquid maintains its volume but takes on the shape of its container; A gas takes on both the shape and volume of its container.

The collection of particles in a gas has "an indefinite, unstable shape.... In a gas, the particles are far apart from each other, and they can move around quickly."

Absent any means to record and correlate units of information, the units remain in rapid motion relative to each other, and far apart, like molecules in a gas. As the ability to store, retrieve, and relate information increases, the behavior of the particles relative to each other "settles down" -- becomes more coherent -- more like a liquid. The particles are still free to move about the volume, and slide easily past each other; and their overall shape still conforms to the container (shape of container being part of the analog of 'context,' which can be manipulated (reshaped) through rhetorical framing of information).

But in the "liquid" state, particles of information form discrete surfaces; and the distance between particles is less than in a "gas." As liquids tend toward solids, up a scale of viscosity, so too does commonly perceptible reality become more "viscous" in this analogy, with advancements in information technology. From Wikipedia:

Viscosity is a measure of the resistance of a fluid to being deformed by either shear stress or extensional stress. It is commonly perceived as "thickness", or resistance to flow. Viscosity describes a fluid's internal resistance to flow and may be thought of as a measure of fluid friction. Thus, water is "thin", having a lower viscosity, while vegetable oil is "thick" having a higher viscosity.

In the present networked information society, the collecting, cataloging, and sharing of evidence is vastly more efficient (and egalitarian) than ever before in human history.

• We are seeing the emergence of filtering, accreditation, and synthesis mechanisms as part of network behavior. These rely on clustering of communities of interest and association ... but offer tremendous redundancy of paths for expression and accreditation. These practices leave no single point of failure for discourse: no single point where observations can be squelched or attention commanded – by fiat or with the application of money. Because of these emerging systems, the networked information economy is solving the information overload and discourse fragmentation concerns without introducing the distortions of the mass-media model. Peer production ... is providing some of the most important functionalities of the media. These efforts provide a watchdog, a source of salient observations regarding matters of public concern, and a platform for discussing the alternatives open to a polity. [Benkler, The Wealth of Networks 271-72; see also Jack Balkin, "What I Learned about Blogging in a Year" (Balkinization 1.23.2004 )].

• While there is enormous diversity on the Internet, there are also mechanisms and practices that generate a common set of themes, concerns, and public knowledge around which a public sphere can emerge. Any given site is likely to be within a very small number of clicks away from a site that is visible from a very large number of other sites, and these form a backbone of common materials, observations, and concerns. ... Users self-organize to filter the universe of information that is generated in the network. This self-organization includes a number of highly salient sites that provide a core of common social and cultural experiences and knowledge that can provide the basis for a common public sphere, rather than a fragmented one. [Benkler, The Wealth of Networks 256; see also Of Strategies and Substrates].

So the ambient reality in the present networked information age is increasingly 'viscous.' Reality is still vulnerable to rhetorical framing, but not nearly as much as it was just a very few years ago. It is now practical for individuals to record, retrieve and relate information rapidly enough to feed back into the equation. Rhetoricians and all other actors may increasingly be held to account.

It is important to emphasize the recency and magnitude of this change. Vast swaths of society still do not conceive (or refuse to believe) that a phase transition [cf.] is underway, altering the very nature of the ambient reality. This explains why political actors (including, but not limited to, corporations & politicians) continue to behave as though reality rapidly evanesces, or that it may be endlessly reshaped; that nobody can enforce a logical consistency among the various things that are known, and hold politicians and others to account for what they do and say.

But it doesn't work that way anymore -- people can check! [cf.]

The old-style Rove-Atwater-Machiavelli-Thrasymachus politics can no longer outpace the rigors of reason, and are anathema to the upcoming digital natives.

Which brings me back to the Ruthless People clip. Judge Reinhold's character (in the clown outfit) has kidnapped Danny DeVito's character's wife, hoping to gain a huge ransom. The scene depicts the handoff of the ransom money. Both parties are well aware that the handoff is being observed by scores of armed police. That is the ambient reality in the scene.

As Reinhold's character prepares to leave with the suitcase full of money, a third party (played by Bill Pullman) enters the scene and attempts a holdup. Only Pullman's character is totally unaware of the ambient reality that the plaza is ringed by police. As summed up by one police lieutenant (@ the 1:10 mark), "this could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the Earth."

You'll make no mistake in imagining those who are ignorant (or incredulous) of the ongoing phase transition wrought by the networked information society to be like Pullman's character in this clip:

. . .. ... .. . .

& in case that scene gets taken down, here is a stand in:






p.s. Rheology is the study of viscosity and related aspects of the mechanical behavior of materials.