One thing that irritates me time and again is when someone tells me they saw something “on the Internet”. It’s an insult to humanity to have such a low degree of literacy. In order to begin to understand how absurd such a statement is, consider how you would feel if someone talked to you about… Continue reading On the Internet …
Tag: AI
Spoken vs. Written Language
Writing this week’s blog post has been difficult, because I have experienced significant trauma related to the topic of this post. In graduate school, I wrote an essay on the differences between written and spoken languages in a course called “diachronic linguistics”, in which I came to the conclusion that it is impossible to study… Continue reading Spoken vs. Written Language
We need to figure out what’s going on
This is something a Silicon Valley celebrity said recently — and I’ve decided to “steal” it because the meaning is actually rather ambiguous and depends a lot on context. The person who said it, simply said it in passing and didn’t contextualize what was meant at all — I actually have a vague “gut feeling”… Continue reading We need to figure out what’s going on
Be the Change
When Jim Morrison sang “I’m a change-ling, see me change” … who knows what he was thinking about? As we may think, he might have been alluding to the Godfather of modern views about change: Non-Nobel Peace Prize winner Gandhi, who apparently advised us all to “be the change you want to see in the… Continue reading Be the Change
More about Modes and Levels of Literacy
I have mentioned before that it is wrong to contrast literacy with illiteracy (see e.g. “Literacy = ! { an on-off switch }“). Instead, I believe there are many modes and levels of literacy. Take, for example, language written on paper. If someone were to call a person who could read either cuneiform written on tablets… Continue reading More about Modes and Levels of Literacy
