My Cousin Nancy, sent me a poem, she had written on her phone. The phone refused to letter her use the work Damn, telling her that she was better than that.
A hundred years before, there was a theory that having an armed citizenry in the old, rosy and romantic west, ensured that it was a polite society.
Currently there are some areas of the US with very high levels of gun ownership, particularly among the criminal classes, but the evidence is still out, as to whether this has resulted in politer public life. I suspect it has not.
Returning to the phone, enforcing standards of discourse. The work around it to use a broader vocabulary, and perhaps regional terms, for which the phone is unable to pick up a double meaning. I can see language becoming increasingly local, and dependent on dialect, as phones take on a greater and greater role of policing word use.
More echo chambers and birdwhistles.
Once more the law of unintended consequences rears its ugly head.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment