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Dec. 4th, 2003
Communication again; pondering the little things that make conversation (in my opinion) the best medium for expression. I.e. communication whereby anything other than direct logical fact has to be conveyed. For facts, probably text (book/electronic) is best1, you normally need to work through them at your own speed and pause now and then to digest it all.
Language. I have a standing argument with a friend (on which we agree to disagree, but every now and then it returns to conversation and we try to convince the other again) that language affects the way we think.
The basis for my argument comes from two directions; firstly that certain languages contain constructs and/or concepts that are not available to other languages. Two examples of this are object/gender representation (i.e. an object is male/female or sometimes 'it'), or letter/number representation (Hebrew). English has neither of these ideas and as such certain nuances of conversation and/or subtleties using these ideas cannot therefore be used. For example, to make a joke regarding (say) a table and working the gender of the table into that joke is not possible in English.
The second basis for my argument comes from my programming background; I know that several coding languages can be used to produce exactly the same result, however the logic flow of these languages and their structure is entirely different - therefore although the result is the same the process is different. This, I argue, is the same for spoken languages (to a degree) as well. Chinese has an entirely different structure and methodology to French, but you can say certain things with both of them. The structure underneath is different.
But this aside, the nuances of communication, just a pause a glimpse, a wrinkle of a smile; they can all hint at what we think. We communicate but we're not always saying what we're thinking - sometimes this is a good thing, we don't want to express everything or just hinting at something can be enough. Sometimes I can catch these hints and start to wonder if I imagined them, or if someone had meant something else, or a dozen other things. Despite conversation being the best form of communication it's still replete with flaws.
[deleted for tangency, end of oil = end of civilization?]
Maybe life needs que cards, maybe it needs subtitles or perhaps just little popup help boxes that you can select for 'for more information on this conversation' or 'for a better explanation of why...' at appropriate points.
Or maybe in 30 years time you'll be able to transcribe your life to a *VD and scan back through it all with exactly those things there, check back your life and watch your memories unfold before your eyes, scenes from the past brought back to life once again.
Me? I'd skip to the outtakes in the special features section.
1 As opposed to ‘the best’; a hideously overused phrase that irks me a lot.
Language. I have a standing argument with a friend (on which we agree to disagree, but every now and then it returns to conversation and we try to convince the other again) that language affects the way we think.
The basis for my argument comes from two directions; firstly that certain languages contain constructs and/or concepts that are not available to other languages. Two examples of this are object/gender representation (i.e. an object is male/female or sometimes 'it'), or letter/number representation (Hebrew). English has neither of these ideas and as such certain nuances of conversation and/or subtleties using these ideas cannot therefore be used. For example, to make a joke regarding (say) a table and working the gender of the table into that joke is not possible in English.
The second basis for my argument comes from my programming background; I know that several coding languages can be used to produce exactly the same result, however the logic flow of these languages and their structure is entirely different - therefore although the result is the same the process is different. This, I argue, is the same for spoken languages (to a degree) as well. Chinese has an entirely different structure and methodology to French, but you can say certain things with both of them. The structure underneath is different.
But this aside, the nuances of communication, just a pause a glimpse, a wrinkle of a smile; they can all hint at what we think. We communicate but we're not always saying what we're thinking - sometimes this is a good thing, we don't want to express everything or just hinting at something can be enough. Sometimes I can catch these hints and start to wonder if I imagined them, or if someone had meant something else, or a dozen other things. Despite conversation being the best form of communication it's still replete with flaws.
[deleted for tangency, end of oil = end of civilization?]
Maybe life needs que cards, maybe it needs subtitles or perhaps just little popup help boxes that you can select for 'for more information on this conversation' or 'for a better explanation of why...' at appropriate points.
Or maybe in 30 years time you'll be able to transcribe your life to a *VD and scan back through it all with exactly those things there, check back your life and watch your memories unfold before your eyes, scenes from the past brought back to life once again.
Me? I'd skip to the outtakes in the special features section.
1 As opposed to ‘the best’; a hideously overused phrase that irks me a lot.
