How Mediators Transform the Journey of Works, Ideas and Knowledge

Read this article in French:
L’horizon de circulation

This article grew out of my observations of the Web since the mid-1990s. Here is what I have observed. Let us look at it together.

You connect to the Internet. You perform a search. A few seconds later, you discover a text written by someone living on the other side of the world. It is written in a language you do not understand. An artificial intelligence instantly translates it for you. You begin reading immediately.

This experience has become so commonplace that it now seems perfectly natural. Yet only a few decades ago, such an encounter with another culture would have been difficult, if not impossible, for most people.

This raises an obvious question: what made this encounter possible?

The most immediate answer is the Internet, search engines, digital platforms and, more recently, artificial intelligence. These technologies undeniably play an essential role. Every day, they make billions of publications accessible to millions of people around the world.

Yet, when we look more closely at this evolution, another reality emerges.

Search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence may simply be the latest representatives of a much older story: the story of mediators.

Throughout history, works, ideas and knowledge have circulated through intermediaries that transmit, preserve, organize and make them accessible. Depending on the period, these mediators have taken many different forms: storytellers, scribes, copyists, printers, booksellers, librarians, teachers, critics, journalists, publishers, search engines, digital platforms and artificial intelligence.

Technologies change. Mediators evolve. Yet the human need remains the same: to transmit works, ideas and knowledge to other people.

This reflection gradually emerged from my observations of the Web since the mid-1990s and from more than twenty years of publishing on the Internet. I have published artworks, texts, poems and essays online throughout that time. Over the years, I have witnessed the emergence of search engines, social media, digital platforms and, more recently, generative artificial intelligence. Each of these transformations has changed the way publications can be discovered and circulate.

Little by little, one question kept returning.

Why do some publications seem capable of travelling across the world while others remain almost invisible, even when they appear equally valuable?

Concepts such as visibility, discoverability, dissemination and transmission help explain part of this reality. More recently, digital marketing has popularized the notion of reach, which measures the number of people a publication can reach within a given context.

These concepts are essential. Yet, through years of observation, I gradually came to feel that they described only part of the phenomenon.

They explain how a publication becomes visible, how it can be found, or how many people it reaches. They account less well, however, for another dimension: the potential journey that a work, an idea or a piece of knowledge can undertake according to the mediators available in a given period. Yet it is precisely this evolution that makes new encounters possible between publications and human beings.

This observation gradually led me to propose another way of looking at the circulation of publications.

I call the horizon of circulation the potential extent of the journey that a work, an idea or a piece of knowledge can undertake, as made possible by the mediators of a given era.

How Mediators Transform the Horizon of Circulation

When we look at the history of cultural transmission from this perspective, a clear pattern gradually emerges.

Every era introduces new mediators that transform the ways works, ideas and knowledge can circulate.

For thousands of years, oral tradition was the primary means of transmission. Stories, songs, knowledge and traditions were passed on through the memory of individuals and communities. The horizon of circulation was therefore relatively limited. A work could survive for generations, but its journey depended entirely on the people who remembered and transmitted it.

The invention of writing profoundly changed this situation. Ideas no longer depended solely on human memory. They could be recorded, preserved and copied. Manuscripts enabled certain works to survive long after their authors had disappeared, even though their circulation remained limited by the slow work of copyists and the small number of available copies.

The printing press marked another major turning point. Producing hundreds, and later thousands, of copies of the same book became possible. Booksellers, publishers and libraries, in turn, expanded the possibilities for circulation. Works could now reach a much wider audience.

Over the following centuries, other mediators appeared: schools, universities, critics, newspapers, radio, television and numerous cultural institutions. Each contributed, in its own way, to the circulation of works, ideas and knowledge.

The arrival of the Web opened a new chapter.

For the first time in history, a single publication could become accessible almost instantly on a global scale. This does not mean that it will be read everywhere. It does, however, radically transform the possibilities of its journey.

Search engines, followed by digital platforms and, more recently, artificial intelligence, have extended this evolution. They create new possibilities for circulation and, in turn, reshape the ways works, ideas and knowledge can be discovered.

Looking back at this succession of transformations, one idea gradually becomes clear.

Each era changes more than the means of transmission. It also transforms the potential extent of the journey that a publication can undertake.

For this reason, I find it useful to speak of a horizon of circulation, rather than simply of dissemination.

The image of a horizon evokes a space of possibilities.

As new mediators emerge, this space expands, changes and is continually reconfigured. New paths become possible, while others gradually lose their importance.

New mediators do not necessarily replace the previous ones. Oral tradition still exists. Printed books continue to circulate. Libraries, teachers and cultural institutions remain essential actors in the transmission of knowledge and culture.

Each era therefore adds new mediators that gradually reshape the possibilities for the circulation of works, ideas and knowledge.

It is this continuous evolution — from the earliest oral traditions to today’s algorithmic mediators — that the concept of the horizon of circulation seeks to make visible.

A Horizon of Circulation Is Not a Guarantee of Dissemination

The concept of the horizon of circulation does not seek to predict the fate of a publication.

It simply describes the possibilities made available by the mediators of a given era.

To better understand this idea, let us consider the example of a poem.

A poem may be recited at a poetry reading before an audience of ten people. It may also be published in a printed collection distributed through a handful of bookstores, reaching a few hundred readers.

The same poem can also be published on the Web. It then becomes potentially accessible to readers all over the world. Search engines can index it. Digital platforms can recommend it. An artificial intelligence can quote it, summarize it or present it to someone who might otherwise never have encountered its author.

Yet the poem itself has not changed.

What has changed is not the work.

What has changed is the range of possible journeys it may take.

That is precisely what I call its horizon of circulation.

This does not mean that the poem will necessarily be read by thousands of people. It may remain almost invisible despite this much broader horizon.

A horizon of circulation does not describe what will actually happen.

It describes what has become possible.

This distinction allows us to differentiate the horizon of circulation, which represents the journey potentially made possible by the mediators of a given era, from effective circulation, that is, the journey a publication actually follows.

The two concepts are complementary. The horizon of circulation describes a space of possibilities, while effective circulation tells the actual story of a work, an idea or a piece of knowledge.

The concept of the horizon of circulation therefore does not replace notions such as visibility, discoverability, dissemination, transmission or reach.

It simply offers another way of observing the phenomenon.

Rather than focusing only on what a publication actually achieves, it invites us to consider the range of journeys that mediators make possible in a given period.

Mediators continue to evolve, and with them, the possibilities for the circulation of works, ideas and knowledge. Understanding this evolution may also help us better understand how global networked culture continues to change.

A broader horizon of circulation does not guarantee the long-term survival of a work, an idea or a piece of knowledge. It can, however, multiply the opportunities for it to be rediscovered, transmitted, translated, archived or brought back into circulation over time. A horizon of circulation does not ensure permanence, but it can help create the conditions that make it possible.

Every publication is a fragment of humanity. A trace entrusted to the mediators of its time and launched toward its own horizon of circulation.

Further Reading

This article is part of a broader reflection on the circulation of works, ideas and knowledge within global networked culture.

🟦 You Publish… But Are You Really Seen?

🟦 How Far Can a Publication Go?

🟦 Global Culture as a Moving Mosaic

🟦 Understanding Today’s Culture

🟦 Why Do Some Human Traces Endure Through Time?

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© Gilles Vallée | Humanist Digital Artist, Poet, Sculptor