please slide your eyeballs on up to the top of your browser window and look at the url in your browser.
language in the realm of computers is particularly interesting because of its ability to command. one writes to a computer and, by doing so, actually acts. some liken this to the ancients' belief in the mystical power of language in the form of runes or charms.
the url is a particularly interesting example of computer language because it's not just words, or even just a command--it's both those instances of language, and a location as well.
everything between the http://and the next / is the name of/location of/directions to a particular website or server. after the /, each term is a directory or file. for instance, the website where i work runs a server machine called FireRescue1, which is our domain name. on that machine are folders corresponding to each of our topics: /products, /ems and so on.
as with any system of language, this one has a grammar that lets us understand the relationships of the parts. in many ways, they go from larger to smaller as you read from left to right, and the smaller parts are contained within the larger ones.
and of course, as in any system of language, even language that's seemingly written for machines, where there is hierarchy, there is prestige.
i recently laughed when a friend recently directed me to his old website, "phoenix web." "oh," I said, are you phoenixweb.com? and he said, "no, phoenix-web.us." and i was immediately struck by what a drop in prestige this was. similarly, this blog would be all the more professional if it were located at inuse.com. but of course, that kind of prestige costs money...
the basic idea for this post came, actually, from a woman's email address i saw: herfirstname@herhusband'slastname.com. would it ever be the other way around?
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
3.11.2008
3.10.2008
Introducing The Interrationale
Another shameless blog plug: I have recently started a new blog as a creative outlet as well: The Interrationale.
Unfortunately, I don't think it is very accessible, at all, since it is essentially just place to put detailed research notes as I read up on some schools of thought that I didn't get to study in college.
The result is all the clarity and cohesiveness of Western Marxist social theory expressed in the vivid, dynamic idiom of analytic philosophy.
That said, I would treat it as a personal favor if anybody read and reacted to it. It actually is going to have a lot to do with language and rhetoric, since one of my main sources is Habermas' The Theory of Communicative Action.
Ultimately, one goal I have is to build to a rigorous answer to this question: how is computing and especially the internet communication changing society?
Unfortunately, I don't think it is very accessible, at all, since it is essentially just place to put detailed research notes as I read up on some schools of thought that I didn't get to study in college.
The result is all the clarity and cohesiveness of Western Marxist social theory expressed in the vivid, dynamic idiom of analytic philosophy.
That said, I would treat it as a personal favor if anybody read and reacted to it. It actually is going to have a lot to do with language and rhetoric, since one of my main sources is Habermas' The Theory of Communicative Action.
Ultimately, one goal I have is to build to a rigorous answer to this question: how is computing and especially the internet communication changing society?
1.21.2008
where have I been?
greetings, faithful reader(s). i've gone over 6 weeks without posting. i'm currently too tired to look anything up, but that may be a record.
where have i been? i've been entering grown-up land! but don't worry, there's lots of language out here too.
between christmas and new year's, a friend and i loaded up a u-haul and moved to san francisco. i also managed to find a real, paying job out here since the last time i posted. i'm the assistant editor of FireRescue1, a news website for firefighters. my first news story (i'll be writing at least one a month) is online here: rappelling firefighters. in addition, i'm putting together bi-weekly and fourish-times-monthly newsletters, the most recent of which you can check out here: volume 221. i'm learning the business of 'web editing,' so maybe you'll see some fancy html up here soon.
though, i have to say, it is surprisingly exhausting to work as much as i'm currently working. mentally, that is. so consider this post my warm up, or my running start--Invented Usage will be flying again in no time. or fall on its face.
i've also got an application in to UC Berkeley's rhetoric Ph.D. program. I should know within the next few weeks if i don't get in. hm...
to make this a more legit post, an invented usage overheard at Tart-to-Tart, a neat little bakery chain that has a branch out here in my new neighborhood, the Sunset: "i don't want too much frosting. I've never cared for the flavor of frost." or something like that. it wasn't totally ironic, either. the speaker said he realized as he was using the word that it was a neologism, but would probably make his meaning understood. and it did. i'm still amazed.
and, as an added bonus, a few teasers about posts i've been considering writing for a while now:
where have i been? i've been entering grown-up land! but don't worry, there's lots of language out here too.
between christmas and new year's, a friend and i loaded up a u-haul and moved to san francisco. i also managed to find a real, paying job out here since the last time i posted. i'm the assistant editor of FireRescue1, a news website for firefighters. my first news story (i'll be writing at least one a month) is online here: rappelling firefighters. in addition, i'm putting together bi-weekly and fourish-times-monthly newsletters, the most recent of which you can check out here: volume 221. i'm learning the business of 'web editing,' so maybe you'll see some fancy html up here soon.
though, i have to say, it is surprisingly exhausting to work as much as i'm currently working. mentally, that is. so consider this post my warm up, or my running start--Invented Usage will be flying again in no time. or fall on its face.
i've also got an application in to UC Berkeley's rhetoric Ph.D. program. I should know within the next few weeks if i don't get in. hm...
to make this a more legit post, an invented usage overheard at Tart-to-Tart, a neat little bakery chain that has a branch out here in my new neighborhood, the Sunset: "i don't want too much frosting. I've never cared for the flavor of frost." or something like that. it wasn't totally ironic, either. the speaker said he realized as he was using the word that it was a neologism, but would probably make his meaning understood. and it did. i'm still amazed.
and, as an added bonus, a few teasers about posts i've been considering writing for a while now:
- jobs that make us break conversational implicatures and hence, create awkward social situations
- AP style (the other thing I'm learning at my job)--practical reasons to solidfy conventions
- language barriers in san francisco
- The Department of Rhetoric and the media-specific analyses of language I would undertake if I were accepted there someday...
1.13.2007
|, or a tale of semiotic mystery
i've been seeing this symbol for a few months now: |, and wondering what it is. i've mostly encountered it on facebook, and never took the time to record where it occurred (this post would be a lot better and more professional if i had).
for some reason it struck me as being exceptionally meaningful. it tended to occur in photo captions, and in correspondences (like wall posts) between boyfriends and girlfriends. i, being me, thought 'how cool! people have taken this apparently meaningless symbol, |, and imbued it with all this romantic meaning. it clearly functions as a sign! what a great invented usage. i better blog about that!'
so i set out to discover the root of the meaning of |.
turns out you can't search for punctuation. (this is also the reason i didn't have the guts to title this post simply, '|'.) smilies (:-D) are also unsearchable. and, let's be honest, google is really my only resource for these kinds of things. i was at a loss!
i did try wikipedia's article on internet slang, to no avail, and found this interesting internet-slang-eliminating dictionary, but it proved just as useless in this case.
but then i consulted a friend who is wise in the ways of pop culture. she immediately asked me if i use firefox to view the facebook posts i mentioned above. i do, in fact, use firefox. she informed me that firefox misinterprets a certain piece of internet slang as |. what i should have been seeing was the internet symbol, '< 3', which some browsers and instant messaging programs display as an actual heart: <3. (i suppose that will look like | if you use firefox!)
at first i was a little disappointed that people were sticking to this iconic representation rather than branching out into the more abstract as i'd first assumed. but really, it's pretty interesting that i was able to glean such an accurate idea of its meaning just from the context of the symbol's use. this just goes to show that | could quite plausibly function as a symbol of love. it would just require that readers be exposed to a couple of instances in which they could gather that meaning from context.
this has already happened to '< 3', which doesn't look so much like a heart, and the standard drawn heart that doesn't really look like the anatomical heart, and the anatomical heart that doesn't actually have much connection to love itself. these connections are already conventionally defined and therefore easy to use quickly. but they're conventionally defined nonetheless, the way i thought | was!
score one for the arbitrariness of signs!
for some reason it struck me as being exceptionally meaningful. it tended to occur in photo captions, and in correspondences (like wall posts) between boyfriends and girlfriends. i, being me, thought 'how cool! people have taken this apparently meaningless symbol, |, and imbued it with all this romantic meaning. it clearly functions as a sign! what a great invented usage. i better blog about that!'
so i set out to discover the root of the meaning of |.
turns out you can't search for punctuation. (this is also the reason i didn't have the guts to title this post simply, '|'.) smilies (:-D) are also unsearchable. and, let's be honest, google is really my only resource for these kinds of things. i was at a loss!
i did try wikipedia's article on internet slang, to no avail, and found this interesting internet-slang-eliminating dictionary, but it proved just as useless in this case.
but then i consulted a friend who is wise in the ways of pop culture. she immediately asked me if i use firefox to view the facebook posts i mentioned above. i do, in fact, use firefox. she informed me that firefox misinterprets a certain piece of internet slang as |. what i should have been seeing was the internet symbol, '< 3', which some browsers and instant messaging programs display as an actual heart: <3. (i suppose that will look like | if you use firefox!)
at first i was a little disappointed that people were sticking to this iconic representation rather than branching out into the more abstract as i'd first assumed. but really, it's pretty interesting that i was able to glean such an accurate idea of its meaning just from the context of the symbol's use. this just goes to show that | could quite plausibly function as a symbol of love. it would just require that readers be exposed to a couple of instances in which they could gather that meaning from context.
this has already happened to '< 3', which doesn't look so much like a heart, and the standard drawn heart that doesn't really look like the anatomical heart, and the anatomical heart that doesn't actually have much connection to love itself. these connections are already conventionally defined and therefore easy to use quickly. but they're conventionally defined nonetheless, the way i thought | was!
score one for the arbitrariness of signs!
8.27.2006
living on invention
it's only somewhat related to our recent milestone, but we've been getting more and more traffic from search engines as our size and internet notoriety has grown.
recently, we've been hit by searches for "exclusionary tactics," "language is use wittgenstein," "deconstruction (use of language)," "anymore usage," "cheetah template trailing comma," "poet wag," "when was the word snot invented," "semantic narrowing," "putz definition," "fruit that is actually a vegetable," "flurl means," "definition mad crunk," "triangle as meaning," "who invented the first army tank," "fugly urban dictionary," and so on.
i'm not sure what a few of these people were thinking. but i'm thinking that, as far as the internet is concerned, language is location. (maybe this is support for my point that language has other purposes than communication.) that is, we ARE "invented usage." just the words. but if people get lost, then we're near a few other related things. for instance, insert any noun that has sparked recent discussion on inuse into the frame "who invented the ____" and google it.
invented usage is in the top five hits for:
"who invented the tomato?"
"who invented the army tank?"
"who invented the semiotic triangle?" (hit #1! i feel lucky!)
"who invented text apparatuses?" (ditto)
"who invented the stradivarius?" (yes indeedy)
"who invented the snoot?" (also, too)
and so on. pretty much any noun in one of our recent post titles will work. and the same goes, by and large, for the frame "usage of ____." if, on the internet, language is location, then it's possible to be in a lot of different places at once. it's like we live on 'invented' street, and also on 'usage' street, and also on 'flush toilet poem' street, and anyone who thinks to go to those locations might happen to wander in here.
and it seems people are desperate for prime linguistic real estate. hit counters swarm with ads for traffic-boosting keywords, and spam robots pile their product name into every available space to increase its importance on the internet (hence our comment verifier!).
but the corner of 'invented' and 'usage' seems like a pretty cozy place to be. while we're not on the first google page for either word, we are in pretty interesting company. search 'invented'. search 'usage'. for instance, i just learned that people invent problems to sell solutions; that the yo-yo has an interesting history behind its invention; that 'invention' is a vague thing, especially where al gore inventing the internet is concerned; and, near and dear to my heart, why QWERTY was invented. we picked such a nice neighborhood.
recently, we've been hit by searches for "exclusionary tactics," "language is use wittgenstein," "deconstruction (use of language)," "anymore usage," "cheetah template trailing comma," "poet wag," "when was the word snot invented," "semantic narrowing," "putz definition," "fruit that is actually a vegetable," "flurl means," "definition mad crunk," "triangle as meaning," "who invented the first army tank," "fugly urban dictionary," and so on.
i'm not sure what a few of these people were thinking. but i'm thinking that, as far as the internet is concerned, language is location. (maybe this is support for my point that language has other purposes than communication.) that is, we ARE "invented usage." just the words. but if people get lost, then we're near a few other related things. for instance, insert any noun that has sparked recent discussion on inuse into the frame "who invented the ____" and google it.
invented usage is in the top five hits for:
"who invented the tomato?"
"who invented the army tank?"
"who invented the semiotic triangle?" (hit #1! i feel lucky!)
"who invented text apparatuses?" (ditto)
"who invented the stradivarius?" (yes indeedy)
"who invented the snoot?" (also, too)
and so on. pretty much any noun in one of our recent post titles will work. and the same goes, by and large, for the frame "usage of ____." if, on the internet, language is location, then it's possible to be in a lot of different places at once. it's like we live on 'invented' street, and also on 'usage' street, and also on 'flush toilet poem' street, and anyone who thinks to go to those locations might happen to wander in here.
and it seems people are desperate for prime linguistic real estate. hit counters swarm with ads for traffic-boosting keywords, and spam robots pile their product name into every available space to increase its importance on the internet (hence our comment verifier!).
but the corner of 'invented' and 'usage' seems like a pretty cozy place to be. while we're not on the first google page for either word, we are in pretty interesting company. search 'invented'. search 'usage'. for instance, i just learned that people invent problems to sell solutions; that the yo-yo has an interesting history behind its invention; that 'invention' is a vague thing, especially where al gore inventing the internet is concerned; and, near and dear to my heart, why QWERTY was invented. we picked such a nice neighborhood.
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