Written by MrVisible on June 25th, 2009
I found this article on language and cognition on Metafilter today, and as often happens, I started to compose a post in reply, and realized that it was a complete derail from the point of the post and the discussion already in progress. It was a classic GYOB comment, in the great Get Your Own Blog tradition.
Then I realized that I had a blog.
So, what I was thinking is that language is a kludge. We needed to share our thoughts with each other, and the only medium we had was sound, so over generations we developed sounds for objects, sounds for actions, sounds for states of mind, and all these sounds could do was give a vague idea of the ideas behind them.
What occurs to me after reading this (fascinating, well-written) article is that someday, we’re going to move beyond sounds. We’re moving rapidly toward the point at which we’re going to be able to use technology to read each others’ minds, and finally be able to do what we’ve been trying to do since we first started using language; share our thoughts with each other. When at last we do this, will we be communicating in language? Will the flavor, the reference points, the orientation that language gives us still apply? When we can communicate by sharing experiences directly, will we still have the need to describe them, and will that description still shape the perception of the experience?
Posted in Philosophization | No Responses »
Tags: GYOB, Language, Metafilter
Written by MrVisible on June 24th, 2009
Tucson is the only city I know of that has an acutal season devoted to dramatic tension. Once the temperature hits 100 and stays there, the whole city starts wondering when the monsoons will get here. We all know that at some point the clouds we see building up ominously over Mexico will unleash apocalyptic thunderstorms upon us all, and that then is when our swamp coolers will stop working.
So we swelter, and we wait, knowing that soon our streets will become rivers, washing our garbage cans away downstream. In the meantime, it’s so hot that after driving for five minutes, your ignition key is too hot to touch.
Weirdly enough, I love this time of year. And so does everyone I know.
I guess you have to be kind of strange to live here.
Posted in Tucson | No Responses »
Written by MrVisible on June 23rd, 2009
I’m suddenly awash in free time, and it’s got me a little baffled.
After four years of plugging away at college classes, I’ve been awarded a degree (4 point freakin’ oh, canyabelieveit) and the incredible luxury of not having any tests to study for or papers due for the foreseeable future. And I’m not really sure what to do with either.
I set myself this goal years ago, when my life was very different, and now that I’ve arrived, I’m finding myself endowed with tremendous momentum but no direction. I’ve forgotten, apparently, how to relax and just enjoy my free time. I may have even forgotten what I used to do with my free time.
I hereby declare that I am embarking on a quest to rediscover my inner sloth. I need to learn how to relax, and I need to do it fast. A surfeit of movies and dumb TV is forthcoming forthwith, a slew of bad novels and time-wasting web pages is in the offing. Computer games need to eat a vast swath of my life.
Because having all this time, and not enjoying it, seems just… wrong.
Posted in Life Stuff | No Responses »
Tags: Angst, Leisure, Sloth, Whining
Written by MrVisible on June 21st, 2009
There are a lot of reasons that a blogger stops updating their site, probably 90% of which boil down to a simple ‘I just lost interest.’ There are a bunch of others, I suppose, like sudden loss of internet connection, World of Warcraft addiction, or abduction by aliens with strong anti-blogging sentiments.
I wonder, however, how many blogs simply go dark because the blogger can no longer talk much about their life without hurting the people they care about. Sometimes, a life that was open to scrutiny, simple and straightforward, can suddenly get complex and covert. That’s what happened with mine.
I realized that there was a period of time when, if I’d had my thoughts on display in a public forum, people might have been hurt. So I pulled the curtain on the blog for a while, in hopes that it would give wounds time to heal, and give people some time to move on.
Having a forum on which I can post my rants and ideas is something I miss, though. And I feel that enough time has passed.
If having my writing posted here hurts anyone’s feelings, I’m sorry.
I’m going to start blogging again.
Posted in Writing | No Responses »
Tags: blog, Writing
