Obviously an insanely imperfect analogy, but kind of fun to noodle on, after having the initial thought actually in the shower. At the simplest level, do you need to cram multiple epic adventure tales, liberally dosed with didactic religious content, into a single human brain? Meter and repetition and tropes become your best friend. Beyond that though, there are still ways that poetic techniques pack more meaning into fewer words than prose, which gets described as “poetic” when it effectively does the same things.
If you find the right turn of phrase, the combination of sound, connotation, and (hopefully) shared cultural touchstones ("“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra”?) means you can describe an entire scene effectively without the multiple paragraphs otherwise needed to set out every morpheme of intended communication. Now, as pages of writing become cheaper and more accessible, they also take over the use cases where efficiency of communication was imposed rather than sought, but the toolbox remains there for those who simply like the exercise, or where there is still value, such as in verbal communication tied to a musical arrangement that needs to wrap things up before the audience loses interest. Also like compression, there are libraries that need to be installed and processing overhead involved to decompress the meaning that has been encoded into fewer words than strictly necessary.
Limitations to the analogy I’m already thinking of: Subtext exists regardless of how wordy you are. It might be a false dichotomy to think you can separate poetry from music at all.
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It’s also possible to speak to two audiences simultaneously. Just vaguely allude to some values without being too specific about anything. With this clever hack you are basically doubling the bandwidth.
Here’s an example: “We stand at a pivotal moment where the choices we make about the resources beneath our feet will shape the world above for generations to come. Our shared future depends on managing what we value with foresight and responsibility.”
So, was I promoting the fossil fuel industry or opposing it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Either way, both sides are happy to hear this kind of talk.
I’d expand on your last thought to say that all art is a compression tool for meaning. Got an idea in your head you want to communicate? You’ve got your body and your environment to work with, good luck. Words, images, dance, sculpture, they’re all noisy channels we use to try and get information from one brain to another.
One reason to dislike AI Art. It’s basically drowning the thing being communicated (the prompt) in fluffy noise.
I’d say devices like metaphor and synecdoche are compression tools for meaning, and devices like rhyme and meter are checksums for error correction.
I like that, though I might consider that rhyme, alliteration, and especially repetition also aid retention by requiring less data to be committed to memory as-is. References to other works are also very much a shorthand for cramming pre-existing memes (in the Dawkins sense) into less “word-doing.”
I dunno. The whole thing breaks down pretty quickly, as most analogies between mental and computational process do, but it’s fun to think about.
I would call it more of a retention tool than compression, as a lot of it is flowery and excessive in length for certain purposes even though other works do compress complex topics into a concise format. The format makes both approaches easier to recall.
