Nusantara Codes

In a social system, nothing is more complex than culture. Culture is a marker of civilisation. It encompasses everything, from the highly complex aspects like life philosophies, values, norms, economy, politics, knowledge and technology, to beautiful expressions such as dances, music and songs, paintings, and even daily food and drink habits. Unfortunately, in everyday life, culture is often reduced to mere art. However, it is impossible to talk about education without referencing the culture that should be transmitted through the process of teaching and learning. It is impossible to perform a dance without understanding the messages conveyed through bodily movements. There is no social order that is not rooted in culture.

Modern issues in the daily lives of Indonesians often arise due to attempts to separate economy, politics, defence, and security from the traditional culture ingrained in social life, whether consciously or unconsciously. Indonesia achieved political independence in 1945, when the founding fathers declared its independence. They knew that becoming independent would be a challenging task. The baton received by the post-revolution generations included the development of Indonesian identity from the remnants of the cultural heritage of diverse nations in thousands of ethnic groups spread across the vast archipelago, which had been shaped by a history spanning thousands of years, not just by the periods of Dutch and Japanese colonisation.

It is difficult to call it “Indonesia” because Indonesia existed long before that name was given to the people living in this archipelago. The term “nusantara” was used long before that too, as various civilisations were born, established, collapsed, and replaced by others, only to be replaced again, and so on. There were many nations in this archipelago. Some nations are said to have acquired others throughout history, sometimes even forgotten by present-day society. These nations are now often called “tribes” or “ethnic groups,” seemingly forgetting that within these nations there are tribes and ethnic groups. However, by not forgetting and diminishing these nations, the term “Indonesian nation” actually shows the extraordinary nature of the people living in the Indonesian archipelago. Indonesia, nusantara, is a nation that is the result of various nations with unique diversity, which is difficult to find parallels to other nations on planet Earth.

This book is titled “Kode-Kode Nusantara” (“Nusantara Codes”) because it attempts to explore the foundations that underlie the social complexity of the great nations in the archipelago. The modern civilisation era was born when the geometric codes, observations, and human records from the European Renaissance received special attention in the formalisation that shaped modern science. Today’s science and technology are the legacy of the European enlightenment era that later enlightened the world, including the nations in the Indonesian archipelago.

This book is an invitation to explore what is encoded in various cultural expressions, most of which are likely familiar to readers, as traditions, games, tourist objects, or routine social habits as Indonesians. Within these everyday expressions, there are hidden codes that imply traces of knowledge that currently seem blurry but are being attempted to be uploaded by modern science and technology to become sources of inspiration for modern life. This book provides evidence of the complexity of research, that there is knowledge revealed when we stop viewing culture as mere tradition. There is mathematics in batik, the geometry of the natural universe in traditional carvings, technological engineering in architectural heritage, and even patterns of melodies that we sing as traditional games. All of this is perceived to provide inspiration that much has been “forgotten” by us because we consider the extraordinary as ordinary. The order of modern science does not only belong to the nations that inherit science and technology since the Enlightenment era. Awareness of social complexity in today’s modern era needs to reflect on the cultural heritage that escapes the clamour of modernism that makes its own heirs forget.

The present era is called the era of information, where creativity is much more valued than agility and skills. The diversity of artistic expressions, knowledge, and technology that becomes the cultural heritage has been seen as a new source of creation to fill the everyday spaces of modern life, both in the digital realm and in the real world. The term “creative economy” has also become a widely discussed slogan, alongside tourism that has been touted for several decades, as a form of economic exploitation of the unique traditional cultural diversity in Indonesia. The power of creativity highlighted in the creative economy and promoted in Indonesian tourism is not just a mere “marketing” slogan of Indonesian identity. The diversity and variation of cultural expressions in the Indonesian archipelago can appear unique and are monuments of diversity that have the potential for an evolutionary study of human culture. There is hope that this book can trigger us all to be more aware of the various traces of knowledge encoded in cultural expressions around us. The excavation of knowledge in Indonesian traditional culture is not only the responsibility of Indonesians but also the responsibility of all humanity. There is a promise that the collective intelligence of Indonesians is not only confined to “local intelligence,” but it enriches the “global intelligence” of human civilisation.

All of this sends a message to younger generations to realise that there are traces of knowledge in the expressions of cultural heritage. Cultural preservation should not only be stuck in the preservation of cultural expressions but also accompanied by efforts to collectively upload traditional culture with all its knowledge to the realm of analysis and comprehensive studies, which then become creative inspirations oriented toward humanity. The generation that inherits the cultural legacy becomes a generation that is far from greed, only talking about tourism and the creative economy in terms of the wealth of traditional culture but not realising the knowledge that is actually also inherited in the economically exploited culture. Science has changed a lot in this era of information. The various innovations in scientific studies, along with the rapid development of computational technology, allows us to explore knowledge from traditional cultural expressions in ways that were unimaginable a few decades ago. Telecommunication technology has also developed so rapidly that culture must be seen as part of the information codes. Information in this digital information era becomes the provider of a laboratory for data science and information technology to further explore the hidden knowledge.