Loaded with meaning or pared down to essentials, these special units of information are the basis of strategy and innovation. This is a good thing—for the most part

by David Holt

Cats have superb senses They react to the slightest scent, the finest movement. That is a good modus operandi for a predator that sleeps a lot but that has to be hyper-alert when the ungulates stroll down to the watering hole. The downside is that the wakeful cat cannot tune anything out.

This illustrates the main problem with information: there is usually too much of it. That is why the ability to focus—to willfully ignore sensory information—is one of the hallmarks of the higher creatures. In humans the reticular activating system (RAS) is a key filter, relegating most of the flood of incoming data to the unconscious, while the conscious mind watches for the red light or finishes that report on time.

The ability to pay attention has a special twist in the realm of strategy and innovation, for here the territory is always partly shrouded in fog. The innovator is able to focus on certain elements that others miss. He or she glimpses a new possibility and begins to recombine bits and pieces of current reality in a process that includes a lot of trial and error. Gradually, a new form is created or a new principle discovered. The process of creating a new strategy is similar.

The trick is to separate certain signals from the background noise. Information is easier to filter when it has a special status, when it has been pared down to some essential quality. This is the definition of a symbol. The realm of symbols is where strategy and innovation take place. Symbols are the elements that can be combined and recombined to create something new that is greater than the sum of its parts.

The classic games are full of powerful symbols, which is a key to their perennial attraction. Consider playing cards divided into black and red suits, with face cards that represent power and status and a digital numbering system. Or chess, where the board represents a map divided into territories, and where the pieces have status, firepower, and mobility.
Humans are social beings, and symbols help us keep track of our place in the social order. Hence kings have crowns, armies have uniforms, and we all dress to suggest who we think we are and where we think we are going. The house on the hill and the flashy car are status symbols, as was the number of cows or camels in an earlier day.

The earliest symbols were drawings in the sand and on the walls of caves: real art that conveyed narrative and emotion. The most powerful symbols are the most abstract: language and mathematics. As vocalizings evolved into oral and eventually written language, it became easier to explain where danger lurked and opportunity could be found.

Counting on our fingers led to the base 10 numbering system, and eventually to the four arithmetic operations. Oddly, no invention in human history has been as potent as the place holder, the humble zero, which is attributed to Arab mathematicians but which apparently goes back to ancient India. It is telling that the Roman engineers who built the aqueducts by trial and error could not calculate simple rates of flow, while the more mathematical Greeks came up with a good estimate of the size of the Earth by measuring a shadow crossing a well.

The most creative innovators are able to find, create, and use symbols where others, like cats, remain lost in the sea of information. This is how knowledge advances in all fields.
Early observers of the heavens created powerful stories about the patterns in the sky: stars and constellations became heroes and gods, and they helped track the seasons too. The inventor of the wheel discovered an abstract principle, probably by rolling a log. The brilliant designs of wooden ships were based on hand-carved models.

Sometimes too much education is a bad thing, in the sense that symbols and abstractions take over and hard reality is neglected. While leading physicists “proved” that manned flight was impossible, the Wright brothers were inspired by the shape of a bird’s wing to conduct detailed wind tunnel experiments that led to a new era in transportation.

Today the ruling symbology is software. It recombines chemical symbols to create new life forms, designs integrated circuits and automobiles, and allows us to share huge quantities of information in the form of zeroes and ones. The Internet has become a utility, channelling Google, YouTube, Facebook, and Apple web Apps. Like water and then electricity, the flow of information has become part of the circulatory system of civilization.  
There is a downside. For much of the time we are plugged into laptops and headphones in a machine-based universe of our own design. When we look up, the day is almost gone. We have spent so much time in the symbolic realm. It is time to get out of our heads and back into our bodies.

Here is where the cat has the edge. It appreciates the sensory life of the body like no other creature. A mysterious desert animal, it was considered a god by the ancient Egyptians and respected by the Norse, Greeks, Muslims, and Celts. It symbolized beauty, equipoise, and a sense of numinous wisdom. Like the best symbols, it also had an Earthly power—in this case, a talent for rat control.

David Holt is a writer and consultant on strategy and communications. He can be reached at dholt@eastlink.