Emergent Ignorance and Our Intangible Heritage: A Personal Essay on History, Technology, and Identity

As an Egyptian, part of the Egyptian American diaspora, and a person who is always unsure—always searching for answers—I’ve realized that the true value of questioning lies in becoming comfortable with what I call "emergent ignorance." In this state, questions lead to more intriguing ones rather than definitive answers. I’ve come to understand that questions about who I am (as a person, an architect, a designer, and a father) are inseparable from where I come from.

This has led me through the beautiful entanglement of what constitutes "Egyptian identity" and how it can be reflected upon, rather than simply portrayed. I am no historian, nor a stereotypical researcher, but through years of independent research and contemplation, I’ve formed my own opinion on what constitutes an Egyptian identity. It is, in my view, complex and ever-changing, like solving a Rubik's Cube that reconfigures with every move.

The pyramid is an interesting symbol to associate with Egypt, though it might stem from oversimplification. The pyramid is probably the first thing that comes to mind for many people (non-Egyptians, and sometimes Egyptians alike) when they hear the word "Egypt." This bias often leads us to summarize who we are in reductive terms, even to ourselves.

Generative AI is a great tool to explore this bias, as it is trained on human data scattered across the internet. While many view AI as superior intelligence, I find generative AI, especially public models with their unfiltered datasets, more of a reflection of our collective notions. For example, if you use "pyramid" as a prompt in many text-to-image generators, you will likely get at least one result portraying the Great Pyramid of Giza. This wouldn’t be the case if you tried to generate images of other polyhedrons or geometric shapes like spheres or cubes. Somehow, these AI tools have inherited our collective bias linking the pyramid to Egypt.

From that point, I’ve dedicated much of my work over the past few years to exploring, critiquing, and even exploiting this bias within these tools. It’s an ongoing journey that keeps revealing interesting insights about both my personal and our collective ways of seeing and creating. As I explore these tools, I see parallels with the challenge of understanding heritage, where we often focus on material symbols—like the pyramid—without considering the people behind them. In many ways, I find these tools more valuable for architects, designers, and artists to integrate with the present, rather than for anticipating a delusional utopia.

My approach to this exploration takes the form of mixing, or rather collaging, at its core. It is based on “informally” researching how these tools perceive the world through my input and tying current events to places and, most importantly, to people. It’s an approach that goes back and forth between exploring novel geometrical vocabulary that could be more informed, empathetic, and reflective of something "genuine," and understanding how both I and “the machine” comprehend the world around us. This understanding guides our (my) journey into the unknown, obscure present, revealing challenges in this lifelong endeavor.

One of the main challenges in understanding our heritage is that we often focus on it as something material—like a pyramid (or how it was built), a house, an ushabti, a mummy (or the mummification process), or any of the amazing tangible inheritance passed down to us as Egyptians.

There are many factors that can distance us from our ancestors, one of them being the inevitable passage of time. Human empathy is limited by perception. You can’t relate to everyone, and you can’t mourn every death. For example, the further back in time our ancestors lived, the less we tend to relate to them. I never knew my grandfather, who died before I was born, but I relate to him more than to his father, who died even earlier, and so on. In this way, time becomes like physical space, keeping us distant—both physically and emotionally—from people who might otherwise feel close to us. As the Egyptian proverb says, "البعيد عن العين بعيد عن القلب" ("Those who are distant from our eyes are also distant from our hearts").

Another factor is Egypt’s geopolitical position, which attracted nearly every civilization that could reach us, leading to repeated invasions over two millennia. With imperialism, both ancient and modern, came the imposition of the colonizer's ethics, knowledge, and language. Civilizations began interacting in interesting ways, merging and transforming one another, resulting in a unique blend of influences. One of my favorite examples is the Fayyum portraits. This merging continues to the present day. Most Egyptians speak English, and many grew up speaking French, a direct result of modern colonization by the British and the French. This legacy affects how we see our past and present, from daily routines to deeper reflections on our identity.

Colonialism doesn’t always arrive in the form of direct rule, like the British or French occupations. Soft power, through media and cultural influence, is another, more subtle form. Unfortunately, many Egyptians (not to mention the rest of the world’s inhabitants) learn about ancient Egypt (and modern Egypt, of course) through Hollywood movies, which are designed to be superficial and often portray us through an "Orientalist" lens. Edward Said's concept of "Orientalism" provides one of the most well-researched explanations of the current state of Western bias, shaping how we see ourselves.

We are frequently told to be proud of our ancestors—the masters of masonry—and our country, the "cradle of civilization." These were great empires that achieved might when much of the world was in darkness. But as I grew up, I don’t remember being told to love them because they were my family, not simply because of their power. Their actions, for better or worse, shaped my bloodline and, in turn, my ideas about the world and myself.

For me, my heritage—our collective heritage—lies in understanding who these ancestors were. The world is trying to learn what they did, but they lack the connection we have. My great grandfather could be Ramses II, Khun-Anup (The Eloquent Peasant), or one of the laborers who built the pyramid of Khufu. Perhaps I wouldn’t even care if they hadn’t achieved greatness. It is my duty to accept and respect my ancestors, whether they achieved anything extraordinary or not. Before telling their stories or repeating foreign interpretations of who they were, I should first relate to them as human beings.

To sum this up: regarding my approach and its relation to technology, I believe that it is more important to understand our true connection to the past before we take pride in it. We inherit blood before we inherit artifacts. Our borders were shaped by invaders who often told us who we are and what we are worth. The mummies displayed in museums around the world—those dissected in the search for the secrets of immortality—are our great-grandparents. Realizing this, I often feel uncomfortable in museums displaying mummies (any mummies, but especially Egyptian ones) because we were raised to respect the dead.

This discomfort extends to any monument, object, or text that attempts to inform us about our history. I view them with both discomfort and reflection, imagining the stories behind them and the people connected to them. These objects have a story, and it’s up to us to interpret them empathetically. Before they were kings, emperors, caliphs, scientists, poets, or workers, they were, like us, people.

With this in mind, the future of our identity—and of humanity—depends on how we use technology, the stories we choose to tell, and how true empathy toward our identity can preserve our heritage. Most importantly, we must understand that we do not preserve our history because of its greatness or might but because it is our duty, our birthright. If we don’t do it for ourselves, no one will.