Genuinely novel thought requires abandoning the networked horizontal plane of information.

Evidence

The idiot savant has access to knowledge of a different order. He raises himself above the horizontal plane – above merely being informed and networked. ‘The term idiot savant, as the autistic first were called, should perhaps be freed up and used for those adventurers who are not simply tied to one another, but to something else [für jene Abenteurer, die anders verbunden sind als nur untereinander].’ Idiotism opens up virginal space – forging the distance required by thought so that speaking may occur in an entirely different manner. The idiot savant lives from the faraway – like a stylite. Vertical tension enables him to find higher agreement: receptivity to events, broadcasts (Sendungen) from the future: ‘Stylite, pillar dweller, antenna. The waves of the overflowing message generate, in the mouth of the holy man, the same noise [Rauschen] as the faint signals the idiot receives from the world.’ — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 191

Categorization

• XREF: The stylite/antenna figure connects to the reader’s earlier theme in ch5 of solitude and silence as productive space. — connects to: Information is structurally prevented from becoming genuine thought — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 126; Renouncing access to everything is the price of coherent thought — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures, 427; Constant information overload structurally undermines the capacity for independent thought — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels: The Quest for Absolute…, 453
• STORYSTEM: The holy man whose mouth generates Rauschen like radio noise — a figure who receives broadcasts from the future — is a striking image for a protagonist who hears what is coming and must speak it.

Broader Connections

• Renouncing access to everything is the price of coherent thought #expands (0.92) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 427
• Information is structurally prevented from becoming genuine thought #expands (0.88) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 126
• Constant information overload structurally undermines the capacity for independent thought #expands (0.75) — George Michelsen Foy, Zero Decibels, 453