Monday, September 3, 2012

My Thoughts and Reflections on James Gleick’s, The Information: A History, A Theory, a Flood. Prologue, and Chapters 1-3.




*Note: All quotes are taken from the book referenced in the title. I am using a digital copy of the book so the page numbers may differ slightly based on the device the reader is using to view the book.

     The prologue was rather interesting. I never realized how much New Jersey has been a part of history. It was where the transistor was named, and Morristown was where it was decided how often each letter of the alphabet is used. That was discussed in Chapter 1, when informing the reader of how Morse code came about. I thought it very clever of Morse and his protégé, Vail, to go to a newspaper and count how many they had of each letter. Even more impressive is that came within 15% of optimal arrangement of their code.

     I also found it interesting when the author wrote about AT&T and how their research team was allowed to branch off and work on anything they found interesting. It didn’t have to immediately tie back to the company. Wouldn’t it be nice if companies today were still like that? It seems in today’s age, society is all about instant gratification and what can turn a profit. I would love to see what kind of inventions and technologies could come out of research when scientists are allowed to take detours again.

     The prologue also brought up that money is information, and that all its forms are “just short-lived technologies for tokenizing information about who owns what” (p. 150*). When I started to switch over to internet banking many years ago I had started to wonder about that lifespan of our dollar myself. Now that money is being thought of more as information, and with the popularization of online banking, could we someday see coins and bills disappear? More technology would need to be developed, and there are inherent problems with the idea. Hackers are always a threat when it comes to information on the internet. Also, the treasury department would still need to control how much monetary bits are being released out so that the value doesn't drop. It does make you wonder if someday the country will no longer rely on metal coins and printed bills.

     Besides NJ being mentioned a second time in Chapter 1, I was also struck by the African drums. For most of the chapter I did not understand them. I was having a hard time trying to understand why they conveyed long strings a poetry and descriptive words and phrases. Finally, the author explained about how the African languages are very tonal and how one word can have many different meanings based on how the word is spoken. Then when you consider all the different types of drums and materialist would be difficult to express tone on the drums. So, the long descriptions make sense, because the people need to clarify which word they are referring to. I wish they author could have explained this a little earlier in the chapter, so that I didn’t have to wait so long to have my ah-ha moment.

     Part of chapter 2 just left me confused and annoyed, and only because of one small part. It aggravated me so much that I had to share it with my roommate. It confused her too. The author included three excerpts from a Chinese philosopher about a white horse not being a horse. Here are the three parts,

Can it be that a white horse is not a horse? It can. How? "Horse" is that by means of which one names the shape. "White" is that by means of which one names the color. What names the color is not what names the shape. Hence, I say that a white horse is not a horse. (p. 705)
You think that horses that are colored are not horses. In the world, it is not the case that there are horses with no color. Can it be that there are no horses in the world? (p. 705)
Horses certainly have color. Hence, there are white horses. If it were the case that horses had no color, there would simply be horses, and then how could one select a white horse? A white horse is a horse and white. A horse and a white horse are different. Hence, I say that a white horse is not a horse. (p. 732)
     This drove me crazy. I couldn’t figure this out for the life of me, and then all Gleick ended up saying is that people have been debating it for millennia. Well thank you. I had to take a break before continuing with the reading because my mind kept going back to this riddle. I finally looked it up on my own and discovered two things. First, this is not the whole translation; it is random parts of it. Second, he doesn’t separate out the two voices, the advocate and objector, or Master Kung-sun and the disputant. It is a lot easier to understand if you find the whole riddle, with the parts clearly defined. I still can’t tell you exactly what it means, but I am less frustrated now.

     Between the horse riddle and then all the information on math, all these terrible memories of high school physics came to mind. My physics teacher loved awful philosophical questions like, how do you know your house is really there if you aren’t there to see it? Maybe it disappears when you are not there? Then combine that with confusing word problems where you need to determine what equation to use and then solve it; I was having awful flashbacks. I will say that it was neat to learn some more about the history of writing. I did enjoy anthropology in high school.

     I loved that chapter three answered a question for me that I had been wondering about for a long time. I had noticed that in older English, words were often spelled in different ways. Not just different from how we spell them today, but different during that time period. I also love that the answer was so simple! There were no clearly defined rules for spelling. Each literate person just spelled the word however he felt was correct. It is amazing how our minds can find the right word as long as the context is there. I have seen a few examples of this float about on Facebook. Like the one where the words are jumbled or just the first and last letters are correct. Maybe spelling isn’t as important as we once thought?

     I just asked my roommate if they still teach spelling in public school. She said that they do until up until the end of fifth grade. At the start of sixth grade it is assumed, hopefully, that the student has a strong enough base in the English language that he or she can figure out how to spell a word, or will use the dictionary. She also mentioned, she has found that while the students are learning to spell word, they aren’t really learning how to use them. Using them once in a sentence really isn’t helping them add the word to their vocabulary. Now add in the truncated language of new media through emails, texting, and leet speak. (Here is a website to try your hand at 1337 speak: http://www.computerhope.com/jargon/l/leetspea.htm ).

     What started as internet slang, such as LOL and OMG, have become more and more common in verbal conversations. LOL, OMG, and <3 have even made it into the Oxford English Dictionary! (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/24/lol-omg-oxford-english-dictionary_n_840229.html)

     I suppose where I am going with this is, perhaps spelling doesn’t have the same importance as it once did? Are we entering a new stage in our language development, where instead of becoming more complex, we are starting to simplify our conversational speech? It will be interesting to watch what happens to our speech and spelling as our technology continues to develop.

     Overall, the prologue and first three chapters had some very interesting points, though tended to be a bit tedious. We will see what the next set of chapters has in store for us…

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