Last week the International Herald Tribune ran an AP story on Nigerian English.
Nigeria, it says, has evolved a Dickensian patois, in which Victorian words and phrases inherited from the colonial era (urchin, gripe water, cutlass) combine with structural and syntactic elements from the hundreds of other national languages to create a unique melange. Good stuff.
[via AWADmail]
I was talking with Peter Kafka of SAI yesterday, and he mentioned John Markoff’s disdain for blogs. Sure enough today I was putzing around nytimes.com, as I compulsively do, and came across this:
“John Markoff covers Silicon Valley. He began writing about technology in 1976 and joined The Times in 1988. He gained some notoriety several years ago when he stated that he thought blogs might be the CB radio of the 21st century. He still believes that.”
Not sure how I missed this the first time around but… John, are you on crack?* The innovations wrought by blogs are here to stay.**
CBs died because better technology came along, not because they were a bad idea. We now use cellphones to talk in our cars, and the web to chat with strangers in stilted lingo. With blogs as with CBs, the underlying technology and nomenclature may well change, but the needs they fulfill remain, and will be met.
Many of the characteristic traits of blogs–reader comments, frequent updates, a personal voice–are being incorporated into other forms of media. And as that happens, blogs per se may fade away. Maybe “blog” will be put out to pasture with “information superhighway,”***.
Though I suspect they will stick around and evolve, and we’ll just keep calling them blogs. It’s a succinct and useful word, where “information superhighway” was always an awkward eight syllables, dated on the day it was coined. But just because we don’t call it the “information superhighway” anymore doesn’t mean the Internet isn’t all that and a bag of donuts. Likewise blogs, by that or any other name.
* John, I don’t really think you’re on crack. Hyperbole is a rhetorical device typical of blogs.
** Self-assured pronouncements by those totally unqualified to make them? Also typical.
*** Larding your “posts” with “links”, either for informative purposes or in hopes of getting “link love”**** back from those you’ve linked to? Again, a typical blogging strategy.
**** Bloggers love cutesy phrases like this.
From the Twitter Blog:
I haven’t played, but it looks fun. Another example of how Twitter is “the right kind of stupid,” as Jacob Harris admiringly put it. Which is to say, it’s simple and has a good API, so it lends itself to creative reuse.
Some Wordies have taken it upon themselves to create games, an effort I heartily applaud. And I’m all ears if anyone has any suggestions for “official” Wordie games. Ideally they’d be simple both to play and to code, and wouldn’t require much in the way of moderation or refereeing. Suggestions in the comments, s’il vous plaît.
One more digression: Takes All Types is the best Facebook app I’ve ever seen. It takes our social networks and uses them as the basis for a national blood donation network. Sign up, let them know your blood type, and they’ll notify you when blood is needed in your area. Such a simple idea, but so powerful.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
I try to avoid talking about politics on both Wordie and Errata, with mixed results. Likewise I try to stay on the topic of language and words, or at least in the ballpark.
But Marc Andreessen’s latest post is just too interesting not to pass on. So to paraphrase Leslie Gore, it’s my blog, and I’ll repost Andreessen if I want to.
In early 2007 Andreessen spent 90 minutes talking privately with Obama, before the media frenzy made that impossible for normal people (not that Andreessen is all that normal). He writes eloquently about the very positive impression Obama made on him, and about how Obama comes across in an unguarded setting. It’s an enlightening post, and will have a particularly strong impact on Andreessen’s post-Boomer cohort.
Despite the fact that Andreessen apparently contributed to Mitt Romney’s campaign (wtf?), I’m going to take a flier. You heard it here first: Obama/Andreessen ’08.
More fun for book fetishists, again from Apartment Therapy: books in the rafters. Exceedingly simple, exceedingly lovely.
Combine this with the bookcase staircase, bookinist, and dictionary wallpaper, and you’ve pretty much encased yourself in books. The missing piece: readable flooring.
This is the least practical staircase ever. Tabbed treads to throw off eye and foot. Stripped lines all over the place, and in every plane, to toy with your depth perception. Clearly an ankle breaker.
As for the books, they must get punted all the time. And a typical stair riser is not more than 7″ high, which means nothing but smallish trade paperbacks under there.
Still, it’s totally awesome, and I want one. Park a bookinist at the top, and you’re in the catbird seat.