Cultural Amplifiers

The members of a number of species are capable of working together to achieve their ends ; ants, rooks, wolves and chimpanzees all cooperate at some times. This capacity amplifies the basic abilities of the individual animal ; one single ant is incapable of survival and reproduction, but a colony can thrive and multiply. Similarly, a single chimpanzee may catch a small monkey, but a group of chimpanzees, with some rudimentary role differentiation, will stand a much better chance of procuring meat.

But human beings do not simply cooperate with other individuals. They cooperate in and through culture. It is likely that a number of animal species are capable of thinking - but humans can call upon the external, cultural aids of language, mathematics or graphic symbols to help them do it. If they want to eat meat, they have agriculture and a system of market exchange that help them do it. If they want to communicate across distances, they can use the telephone or the radio. These are what Vygotsky calls cultural amplifiers. Unlike the group amplification of the ant or the wolf, cultural amplification can stretch out far beyond the lifetimes of individual members of the group, and can be enormously - if not infinitely - changed and adapted to meet new conditions. They must be learned, rather than given by genetic inheritance.

The American Psychologist Jerome Bruner identifies three different kinds of amplifier. The first is amplifiers of motor capacities ; you can use a bicycle instead of walking. The second is amplifiers of perceptual abilities ; a magnifying glass or a pair of loudspeakers augment our visual and auditive capacities. The third is amplifiers of our ability to think about the world - myths, scientific theories ... and language itself are cultural constructs that extend our individual thoughts and representations.