I wanted to add this to my original post because I think it sums up my point nicely:

"That which interests us in a given situation, that which we are likely to grasp in it first, is the side by which it can respond to a tendency or a need. But a need goes straight to the resemblance or quality; it cares little for individual differences. To this discernment of the useful we may surmise that the perception of animals is, in most cases, confined." - Bergson from Matter and Memory

Constraints on what we broadly know and understand are constraints on our contact and perception of the world. We can't live in a digital world and be blind to the recursions and graphs in the furniture.