The Horizon of Circulation in Global Culture

Read this article in French:
Jusqu’où une publication peut-elle aller ?

An everyday scene:

You log on.
You search for a topic that interests you.
Within seconds, you find a fascinating article.
You read it.

Then you discover that it was written by someone living on the other side of the world and translated so that you could read it.

You realize that only a few decades ago, you probably would never have had access to that text.

What made this encounter possible?

For centuries, works, ideas and knowledge have circulated through mediators such as storytellers, scribes, booksellers, librarians, teachers and critics. Today, new algorithmic mediators — search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence — also play an essential role in their circulation.

In our example, it is precisely these new mediators that made this encounter possible.

Mediators make encounters possible. But their ability to circulate a publication also depends on the way it is published.

Choosing how to publish

Take the example of a poet who wishes to share a poem.

The poet may choose to recite the poem during a poetry reading before an audience of about ten people, without publishing it.

The poet may also decide to publish it in a printed poetry collection distributed through a few bookstores, reaching a few hundred readers.

Or the poet may publish it online, where it can be shared, indexed by search engines, recommended by digital platforms, sometimes cited by artificial intelligence, and discovered by tens of thousands of readers around the world.

The poem is exactly the same.

What changes is the potential extent of its journey.

This is what I call the horizon of circulation.

Several ways of making a text accessible coexist. If we choose to publish it, each publishing method opens a different horizon of circulation. The chosen method of publication therefore influences the potential extent of the circulation of a work, an idea or a piece of knowledge.

I have used the example of a poem, but the same phenomenon applies to every publication: a work of art, an idea, a piece of knowledge or even a simple personal testimony.

Algorithmic mediators now allow certain publications to reach a horizon of circulation on the scale of global culture.

Choosing how to publish also means choosing how far a publication may potentially travel.

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This text is part of the series Understanding Today’s Culture, a chronicle of global networked culture.

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Further Reading

🟦 You Already Use Artificial Intelligence

🟦 You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

🟦 AI in Art: Beyond Creation, the Algorithms That Organize Global Culture

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

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© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor