Humanity’s Operating System: cultureOS
Culture as a word and even a term, is often used in many ways, sometimes misunderstood. If it helps, an agreed upon definition of what exactly culture is and means is also still hotly debated in the social sciences of anthropology and sociology. While we may not have a strict definition, I think we can, at this point, say that culture is humanity’s Operating System; cultureOS. Why and how does this help us?
By framing culture in this way, we can better understand the increasing role, impacts and importance of digital technologies on our societies.
By considering culture as an operating system, governments, social organisations, tech and non-tech companies, can better understand and develop products and services for consumers and citizens. Such a framing can also help us figure out how to adapt technologies to our cultures and societies with perhaps, a little turmoil. Perhaps.
Given too, that human societies and cultures are connecting unlike ever before, we may well need a model like cultureOS to help us evolve our societies at a global scale.
We know that our world, our societies, are becoming increasingly complex and that, as always, technology plays a critical role. But whereas technologies played varying roles in different parts of our societies in the past, digital technologies are being integrated across every aspect of societies in our present and will do even more so, in the future.
As with any technology, it can be used for good and bad. It can benefit and hurt society. But just as critical as culture is to the survival of our species, so is technology, for technology is part of being human. We simply cannot survive without either. It is what we do with technologies that matters.
Technologies themselves hold little or no value. It is what we do wth a technology that holds value. There is no value in a telephone for example. The value is the conversations that happen as a result of the telephone.
The degree to which we need and use technologies varies of course. These are things we figure out using culture. When a new, especially revolutionary, technology is introduced to a society, it often creates change. Sometimes huge, sometimes minimal, but always change.
A technology can change a society or culture, then culture eventually figures out how to change the technology. That’s when a technology becomes invisible, because we use it without thinking about it. It is socioculturally accepted. This is also when technologies become more interesting.
In my approach to seeing culture as an Operating System, I have tried to make sure there is as little, to no, colonial or Western European biases or thinking. I see cultureOS at a macro level, inclusive of all of humanity, leaving ample room to respect and embrace how wonderfully diverse we are.
Why Culture is Humanity’s Operating System
First, let’s put a general definition around what culture is and includes. In essence, culture is the methodology we developed to survive where biological evolution is too slow. Biological evolution can take many thousands, sometimes millions, of years.
Humans are still evolving biologically, but culture and the use of technology helps us survive while natural evolution works its wonders.
Somehow, a rather long time ago in human terms, our brains figured out that our species would likely go extinct if we didn’t figure out ways to live longer. Fast. We also figured out we survived better and longer if we worked together. Tools came along and technologies like language and writing. Leading up to todays digital technologies. I’m really summarising here!
The cultureOS Draft Framework
Culture is not just the arts and entertainment. That is what we would call the aesthetic element of culture. Anthropologists generally agree that culture includes societies, governance (of societies), kinship systems (family, friends etc.), economic systems (capitalism etc.), military (sadly), political systems (democracy, communism etc.) aesthetics (arts, literature etc.) and Religion. We might consider these culture’s apps (software) that come together to form the operating system.
Within each of these apps are the elements that make them work. For example, aesthetics. The aesthetic app would include fashion, literature, music (which is also tied to maths), dance, symbology, and architecture.
If we think in terms of digital technology to carry the analogy through, then if these are the apps, we have to have middleware and hardware.
Middleware would be the code bits that enable the apps to work with the hardware and brings everything together. The middleware would include norms, traditions, values and behaviours. Every culture has them. They are what enable cultures to work.
The hardware would be the physical tools we have developed using the apps (software) in conjunction with the middleware. Some tools we use the same way across all human societies, such as a hammer. Others are used in ways that reflect norms, traditions, behaviours and values. A tool example would be the smartphone.
The diagram below looks at the apps and core elements that make up cultureOS.
How each of these elements is used varies widely across global societies, but they are prevalent in all human societies to varying degrees.
Why should we consider cultureOS?
Precisely because our world is getting more complex, deeply interconnected and we are, for the first time, able to connect human societies at a global scale. As well as the many things we do within our societies.
This is causing global sociocultural systems to have a dialogue at a macro scale that hasn’t happened before. It is in part why we are seeing increased tensions between religious and political ideologies, weird economic shifts and new patterns. Pressures on older systems.
Interestingly, in the past when a revolution in communications technologies came along, we also had an increase in the speed of transportation technologies. This is not the case this time. If transportation technology had kept pace with information technology, we should all be beaming each other into homes and offices and cars would be a distant memory.
There has long been an assumption that when different human societies meet, the first thing they do is fight each other. This is essentially, a Hobbesian view of the world. Very much old-school Western European thinking. More recent anthropological and archaeological research is suggesting otherwise.
Different human societies when they meet, do sometimes clash first. But it seems that more often than not, we prefer trade and to learn from one another. I think Hobbes can hobble back to his corner.
While this is a synopsis of the overall concept of cultureOS (which I am working on for my book), it can provide us with a framework for thinking about a more technologically advanced society that is inevitably going to need us to work together more than a fractured nation states.
Especially as we try to navigate our rapidly changing climate and the increasing capabilities of Artificial Intelligence and quantum computing.
