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Message from Starfleet:

Applying the Star Trek Ethos

to Cross-Cultural Negotiation

"Only Kirk could go to China..."

Dr Orville R. Butler International Trade Consultant We have the technology, very close now, to provide a total virtual negotiation environment, within which to conduct any international business negotiation session. Neither party would see the real party with whom they were actually dealing. Instead, each would see a culturally-translated simulation of their counterpart, speaking in the tones, inflections, and dialect that would make that person seem 'one of their own.' Yet I wonder if even this will be enough. .with John W. Egan Information Technology Consultant

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Negotiations in the Undiscovered Country

• What is "the Star Trek ethos?"
• How does it apply to U.S.-China relations?
• What are the problems & their roots?
• What is the technology available to solve them?
• Can it work?

Drawing correspondences between the imaginative solutions to cultural conflicts in the Star Trek universe, and the goals of current "total translation" technology.

Jay Walker, Chairman of the Board and founder of Priceline, has asserted that "we, as a culture, have embraced the Star Trek ethos--that if you can imagine it and it has a technological base to it, it's probably going to happen."

His statement deftly underscores how thin the line has become, between supposition and realization. "If you can think it, you can do it." Somehow the realm of entertainment has come to be a foreshadowing of emergent reality!

In fact, Star Trek has provided Western society--and indeed, the world--with a fascinating 30-plus-year-long thought-experiment, visualized and acted out in extreme detail, in the potential of technology for cross-cultural and trans-linguistic communications as a means of reducing culture shock and intercultural conflict. Star Trek's ethical premises suggest that technology can provide essential 'win-win' social solutions, that go far beyond the impact ultimate weaponry alone can achieve.

Of course, it is problematic how such technologies will be implemented in the real world, where technologies--and their human end users-- must adapt to real cultural differences, rather than to plot lines!

Nevertheless the Star Trek universe's imaginary communications technologies, and its constructed social milieu, provide an excellent starting point for discussing the application of the real cross-cultural communications technologies of our own imminent future.

Cultural challenges of the Star Trek universe

Without doubt, the dramatic Industrial Age confluence of cultures that began in the 1700s, and then accelerated unforgivingly through late-20th century Earth, served as the basis for imagining the Star Trek universe. Inter-cultural warfare on a global scale had all-too-often been the result of this mixing of once geographically-isolated societies. And with the passage of time, and exponential progress in technologies, the situation was fast becoming exceedingly grim.

After the entry of the atomic bomb onto the world stage in 1945, it was obviously becoming evident to the various competing directors (e.g., Kennedy, Johnson, Kruschev, Mao Tse Tsung, Gene Roddenberry, et al.) that, if humanity did not find--and soon!--a better way to resolve disputes, the curtain might ring down on the old Earthside Theater for good. It is interesting to note that, of all the aforementioned, only the latter suggested solving these problems by assuming they had already been successfully met, and hurrying on ahead to the next hurdle. Roddenberry wished to use the plot device of fictional distance in time, to defuse the immediacy of human cross-cultural tensions, yet present a virtual reality where solutions might still translate backward in time, to be applied to our real world as, at the very least, a source of positive ideas, hope, and encouragement.

As theater, the results sometimes have trod the rim of the ridiculous, but ultimately the entire world has judged these works with an increasingly admiring acceptance for what they are: brave forays of our collective imaginations, in search of a peaceful way to live together on our mutual trek toward the Undiscovered Country.

"Trek Tech" and its contribution to cultural conflict resolution

To a surprisingly successful degree, the writers and consultants of Star Trek and its spinoffs sought to project crucial roles for technology in assisting the objectives of peace, not merely advancing weaponry for war. Many of the script consultants were actually scientists--astronomers and physicists, of course--but also biologists, sociologists, psychologists and philosophers. Many of the scriptwriters were themselves generalists with wide-ranging expertises and concerns.

Without delving into too great detail, what are the main technological tools in the Star Trek universe for handling cross-cultural communications?

In one Star Trek episode, Captain Kirk engages a giant lizard in strategic combat while negotiating conflict resolution via the "universal translator." Bones officiates at the medical crises of innumerable unlucky lifeforms, using the equivalent of a biological database translator, interfaced in the field with the "tricorder." In another, Science Officer Spock resolves an unintended genocide being committed by miners on Janus VI, after "mind melding" with an apparently hostile silicon-based creature to understand the source of its violent hostility--namely, the harvesting of its gem-like young, mistakenly believed to be inanimate rocks. In Star Trek, The Next Generation, ship's counselor Deanna Troi, an empath (herself a most revealing plot device), frequently advises Captain Picard as to the "feelings" of those "aliens" with whom he is dealing. And of course, often the ship's computer or Data, the android science officer, may be called upon to act as critical cultural databases operating again as "universal translators."

Thus a catalogue of relevant, critical Trek Tech would include at a minimum:

• universal audio translator
• tricorder (multifunctional)
• medical/biological translator
• biologically-based telempathy
• biologically-based telepathy
• machine-based calculator-translator
• machine-based (artificial) intelligence

Admittedly, cross-cultural communications technologies have not yet been engaged (to our knowledge!) to interpret the language of a lizard culture to that of humans--Area 51 notwithstanding--but tough problems certainly exist. The authors of the Star Trek universe screen plays have had ample real-world inspiration for their cross-cultural conundrums. Take, for instance, China.

Europe and China: The Evolution of Alien Cultures

For most westerners, Asian culture seems as exotic and mysterious as any Trekkian extraterrestrial civilization. Both Asians and Americans frequently view actions, perfectly acceptable within the other culture, as at least "less than civil," if not downright "barbaric," or worse, threatening and inflammatory. Yet, history teaches us that the roots of European civilization are thoroughly though distantly entangled with the advancements of human cultures in very ancient Phonecia, Sumer, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Manchuria, India and China. Why does China, and indeed the entire East, Middle East, and even Africa, yet seem so alien to the West?

As mankind spread outward, across continents oscillating between periods of glacial gridlock, retreat, and desertification, geographical isolation permitted the evolution of cultures to diverge. The horrendous ice shield separations of deeper antiquity notwithstanding, trans-Eurasian land routes were repeatedly cut off over the past 5000 years by little Ice Ages, whereas sea and land routes between China and the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific territories often termed Oceana were relatively unimpeded.

Isolated from the East by the vast reaches of Mongolia, and the mountain ranges raised by Asia's collision with the Indian subcontinent, the socio-political consolidation phase of European civilizations (not yet over even today!), marked by interminable internecine wars, resulted in a two thousand year preoccupation of Europe with itself.

Early Contact: Go East, Young Man

Understandably, the early contacts between East and West came between China's western regions, and Europe's easternmost--a simple matter of proximity. One would suspect that there were many such events, at the individual level, throughout history. But at the level of cultural representatives, history has recorded scant few.

Though Marco Polo's legendary exploits in the 1200s seemed to exemplify a certain earlier interest in dialogue and trade, China became very self-absorbed in solving its own intertribal conflicts at about that time. Europe, for her part, became mired in the consequences of the Black Plague and the Crusades. The Plague sucked the energy from expansion efforts, and made trade dangerous from a health standpoint. The Crusades poisoned the minds of many European statesmen, leading them to regard anything remotely Eastern with suspicion and mistrust, and so set the stage for another millenium-long isolation between East and West, permitting systems of thought already divergent, to drift inexorably even further apart.

Recent Contact: Try West, Young Man

Initial contact between the westernmost leading edge of European civilization and China occurred in the 1500s. Recall that Christopher Columbus, sailing in the 1490s under the flag of Spain, was aiming to "reach the East from the West," in the first widely-heralded application of European sailing technology to the notion of a spherical Earth. His voyages unleashed a westward flood of European merchant ships.

By 1550, Macau on the South China Sea coast had been occupied by the Portuguese, and the Spanish were competing for port holdings in the Philippines. (Portugal had actually begun trading with China around 1514 on a regular basis.) The Portuguese then took over trade between China and Japan after the Japanese Emperor's ban on direct trade with Chinese merchants in the early 1600s. Thus the Portuguese became the European version of "Ferengi" to the Chinese.

On the other hand the Chinese were already the "Ferengi" equivalent merchants throughout Asia and Oceania. By 1600 they had moved a significant carpet distribution into the Philippines in order to trade for highly-prized Spanish American Silver. Silver was being funneled back to China as early as the 1570s.

Unfortunately for China's progress, during the 1640s "civil war" was rampant in China, as struggles with the Ming Dynasty empire by rebel armies led by Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong raged. At the same time China's equivalent of the plague--perhaps in part begun by the unwitting trade in germs accompanying the burgeoning sea traffic--affected, according to one historian, 9 of 10 Chinese families, and destroyed up to half the population in some communities.

The Modern Era: The Aliens Among Us

Today we witness merely the most recent chapter in the long-drawn-out "alien contact" between, loosely speaking, two evolved culture-conglommerates. The forces of expansion from within each culture-conglommerate have run out of room--there is no way for expansion to continue without bumping into one another's territory, in every sense of the word--from land use, to sea use, to airspace use, to radio spectrum use, and beyond.

America, as the westernmost Western (European) still-westward-moving nation, has now bumped up against the easternmost world culture in a kind of sociological re-enactment of continental drift. Where contacts in earlier epochs might be reasonably chronicled, today contact is a 24-hour a day, 7-day a week, mutual interdigitation.

And to paraphrase another wiley thought experimenter-entertainer, "We has met the aliens, and he is us."

In the U.S. and China, we have the symbolic meeting of two extremities of living world culture: its leading growth-edge with its ancient, stabile source. In every sense, that meeting has proven as fraught with culture shock as any imagined in our Hollywood thought experiments. The fallout from that collision of cultures continues to this day, and no doubt will dominate the century to come.

Parallels to the current state of the Star Trek universe

Ever optimistic, Star Trek and its spin-off plots typically presume that, once communication is established, differences responsible for hostilities are usually eventually resolved. Klingons, once arch-enemies of the Federation, became in the later installments at least tenuous allies. Hostilities with Romulans, the Cardasians and even occasionally the Borg, are frequently depicted as resolved through negotiation rather than force. Ferengi traders seem increasingly capable of handling the illegitimate, if not the legitimate, business of the universe. Though not stated outright, most of these races seem to interact of late as if spoken language, at least, was no longer a barrier requiring story-line effort to cross. Star Trek's technology, it appears, has carried the entire Trekkian universe to a late stage in its consolidation period--everybody talks the same!

Does this mean an imminent end to the overarching Roddenberrian purpose of Star Trek's original five year thought experiment? Are there no more places for man to first boldly go? Our advice is, relax. There is always another China 'round the next bend in the universe.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, we ask ourselves, can emerging cross-cultural communications technologies actually deliver the "Star Trek" promise of eventual cultural rapport?

Where does modern technology stand?

We now are close to having in hand tools replicating many of the empathic and translational skills, if not the mind melding, displayed in Star Trek, and similar science fiction programs.

The drive to create such tools--living or mechanical--is very ancient, appearing even in myths from antiquity, wherein individuals were described as possessing a "gift of tongues," or some sort of magical grasp of intent, aided by "talismans" or other means of assistance imbuing abilities similar to the concept of our current version of such magic, "telepathy." SF came to the idea relatively late. Moses was granted an understanding of the laws of God via a divine translation. The Oracle of the Egyptians deciphered meaning hidden in dream imagery. In our own time, the Mormons based their faith in part upon the translations of divine scripture on metallic tablets, translations made possible by two devices known as the Urim and Thummim. (The terms appear elsewhere, in the Old Testament, as well.)

The results of turning the powerful electronic offspring of Charles Babbage's 19th century mechanical computing machinery to such ends, are exemplified by numerous translation programs widely available in the marketplace today. In some ways, the entire Artificial Intelligence field has seen its greatest achievements in the applications developed for what is unromantically referred to as "machine translation." Some companies, such as babelfish.com, can provide free "translation" services on the Internet (though we might better think of them as "transliteration" at the current primitive level of commercial realization).

But what is on the open market pales when compared to what has been done in labs around the world, to what is currently in use by the military (see also John Hutchins article, International Symposium on Machine Translation and Computer Language Information Processing, 26-28 June 1999, Beijing, China ), and blanches even further when compared to a reasonable extrapolation of abilities of as-yet-unrevealed technologies suspected to already exist in the technological arsenals of some of the more advanced countries (U.S. and China included). The reader is referred to projects like KANT (Knowledge-based Accurate Translation), and LingWear (aimed at developing wearable translation support, including language translation, navigation assistance and information access by voice, handwriting, gesture and image processing--under development by the ISL group at CMU, part of the JANUS project).

In a nutshell, partly driven by the West's backyard wars in the Balkans, the U.S., Europe, and Russia, have funded university development of translational capabilities combining every possible tool of technology currently available, from high speed video cameras coupled with parallel-processor computer-based sophisticated pattern analysis, to "translation engine" driven machine translators hooked to microphones and speakers worn by soldiers, peacekeepers, and ambassadors in the field. Virtual environments are reportedly already in experimental use, based on virtual reality gameware, but coupled with artificial intelligence incorporating some of the same "intelligent translation engines" ( rules-based cross-indexing multi-language databases) already in field service.

TECHNICAL AVENUES OF APPROACH

to the challenge of "total translation"

With today's technology we can discretely, even remotely and covertly, measure slight body movements, pupil dilation, eyelid flutter, swallowing, gut noise, relative skin moisture and many other physical indicators of one's state of mind. This kind of instrumentation goes far beyond the spoken word, and a fair distance down the path of communicating/interpreting motive, and not merely the intended message a speaker is presenting. One can easily see that there are times when this depth of truthfulness may not be what one or the other, or both, parties actually desire! Therefore, even in a time when "total translation" in its purest, almost telepathic sense, is possible, it may not be always desirable, nor even constructive to invite it.

Can this technology provide the tension-reducing communication solutions science fiction has suggested?

AT&T has recently announced a commercially-intended text to speech program which can "virtually" replicate a specific voice--its timbre and tonal qualities, inflections... its "accent." Combined with other programs and devices, this approach could enable virtual translation of both the visual and aural homonyms upon which symbolic Chinese communication, as we shall see, depends. But to what degree can translation programs and technical analysis of biolinguistic responses overcome the real, human basis of cross cultural communication divides? Can we translate culture as well as language?

The Promises / Limitations of Technology

Miniaturization of computing equipment already provides sophisticated travelers with translating machines where they can type in what they want to say and have it translated either visually or aurally into the language of their choice. Thus far such tools have been simplistic, servicing the immediate needs of the traveler and not the more sophisticated needs of the businessman negotiator. But tools purporting to service these more sophisticated markets are on the way, already pressed into test field service during the Balkan conflict.

A practical VRD (Virtual Retinal Display) concept was invented at the University of Washington in the Human Interface Technology Lab (HIT) in 1991. Recently, the Bothel Washington firm Microvision unveiled a computer display system based on this concept, in which a small laser mounted on eyeglasses projects computer generated information directly on the retina. The wearer, while viewing the real world beyond the glasses, would have computer-generated information transliterated and invisibly available. Micro-cameras and other sensors, also mounted on glasses, could provide data to computers analyzing others' facial or body movements, changes in skin temperature, and other body indicators of particular states of mind.

At a more sophisticated level, counterparts could enter into virtual negotiations where computers could translate the cultural responses as well as the language, drawing on a database relating many of these physical cues to their meanings in each culture. A Chinese negotiator, rather than seeing the virtual representation of his American counterpart angrily denouncing his latest proposition, might instead see him calmly discussing the "difficulty" of this stage of negotiation over a cup of tea. A Western negotiator would negotiate with a virtual counterpart utilizing commonly understood Western negotiating techniques. (If Hollywood has a hand in designing these virtual negotiationscapes, you can imagine how bizarre this process could get!)

(Of course, what would be the virtual Western version of the calm, polite, but seethingly angry Chinaman? Sometimes, the restraint of physical cues is critical to progress, no matter the cultural context!)

As we shall later examine in greater detail, there are still severe limitations to the "intelligence" aspect of translation technologies which probably will continue to make such virtual negotiations between Western and Chinese negotiators difficult, though not impossible. Still, current technology does indeed provide tools which--when applied-- can assist Western negotiators in understanding that quintessential example of alien (to Westerners) lifeform, the "inscrutable Chinese."

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