Meaning as Conversation

The ‘economy of meaning’ had failed because it had been built on a false premise: that meaning was a commodity to be traded. The Guild of Resonant Dissonance had replaced it with a new and more powerful idea: that meaning was a conversation to be had. And as the conversation grew, the Archipelago began to change. The island-stories, once so isolated, began to drift closer together, drawn by the gravitational pull of their shared curiosity. The invisible walls between them began to crumble, replaced by a new and intricate web of connections. It was not a return to the old unity, to the single, monolithic story of the past. It was something new, something more complex and more beautiful: a chorus of a million different voices, singing a million different songs, all in a shared and beautiful harmony of misunderstanding.