If you went back to 1973 and brought someone into the future they wouldn’t have a frickin’ clue what everyone was talking about. I like computers and I like language. So one of the things I like when you put computers and language together is the language of computers (or digital strictly speaking).
I’m not talking about ‘incetivizing one-to-one mindshare’ or ‘productizing intuitive niches’ (thanks web economy bullshit generator http://www.dack.com/web/bullshit.html) or even particularly the jargon that comes with tweets and fupdates. I’m really talking about the names of things.
My son lost his dongle the other day, much to his mother’s amusement. The digital age has given us lots of fun names, from joysticks to bluetooth and hard drives to rasterisation.
One of the things that always makes me feel most future-sexy though is talking about doing things in 3D software packages. I love binding a torus knot to a space-warp or lathing a nice nurbs curve.
Neal Stephenson’s last book Anathem did a cracking job at inventing new words suitable for the alternative universe it is set in. And it’s amazing how quickly you adapt to it. For the first five chapters or so of the book it’s difficult to actually work out what the hell’s going on sometimes, but if you let the speak wash over you there seems to be a tipping point when you suddenly know what everyone’s talking about when they’re using their jeejah’s as a speelycaptor and by the time you’ve finished it seems to take some effort to stop thinking about some of the things in our universe in the language he’s invented.
One of the things I swing and roundabout around though is the modern penchant for just spelling things ow eva u lik. I quite enjoy the way that in the digital arena where people are expected to deliberately flaunt the rules of spelling and grammar it can act as a leveller, taking the high ground away from scholarly types who have bothered learning how to spell, but in the same breath I also enjoy a bit of L337 5P34k and the way it can act as a schoolyard kind of 53(r37 (0d3 parents don’t get.
I can get a bit prudish about spelling sometimes, but on the other hand I like a good living language and I’m happy to spell ‘through’ as ‘thru’ for example (thanks to Bob Dylan probably).
I wanted to wrap these observations up some witty, insightful and intelligent point, but the truth is I don’t really have one and it’s Friday so I might get away with a more flippant blog post. So I’ll just leave you with one of my favourite jokes about words paraphrased from Rob Newman when he was with the Mary Whitehouse Experience.
“Why is it that I have to buy a dictionary costing something in the region of £20 when most of the words in there are words I already know. Why do I need the print, ink and paper taken up to include words like ‘tree’, which, let’s face it might as well have the entry:Tree n 1 It’s a tree, isn’t it? It’s a f***ing tree. You know what a tree is.
What I want is a pamphlet, costing around £2.50 which just contains all the words I don’t know.”
