Writing Beginnings – 4 – A Guidebook to Internet Use Self-Assessment

We’ve covered a lot of ground with regard to communications.  Most of it has been inherently transitory.  You speak a word and it is gone from the world in an instant.  It lives on in the minds of the hearers and the speaker, but making that word live on for others takes a great deal of effort and only the most important can then be carried forward from generation to generation.  A large amount of information can be carried forward, but there are certainly limits.  There are also many things in the world that aren’t transitory – the human form, the landscapes, the sky/stars/sun/moon, etc.  Ideas, stories of our rulers and ancestors, etc. didn’t persist unless we made them persist.  Since persistence is good…

If we consider what written language probably started out like, it is most likely with people trying to draw objects in the sand/dirt to help them get their message across regarding something that needed to be accomplished or a narrative that someone needed or wanted to convey.  “I can’t seem to make a sound or gesture that gets my point across – wait, there’s a shape in the sand that looks kind-of like where I’m trying to go.  Let me just round out that corner and add/delete this detail and voila!”  And then “Wait, I could just start from a smooth plot of sand and draw my own!”  And.  The.  Rest.  Is.  History.  That said, though, what we’re discussing was all by definition before what we call recorded history so we can’t really know what transpired with any high degree of certainty.  The development of writing could have and probably did take many paths (and I suppose you could say it still does).

People – Steven Pinker comes to mind due to the currency of his writings – have written volumes on the subject of language.  Speaking or writing about language at length seems a bit odd when I think about it.  It’s a bit like standing in between two mirrors and adjusting those mirrors until you start to see yourself repeated again and again to what looks like infinity.  It is not infinity primarily because you can’t see that far, but it really is similar to trying to see back to the beginnings of language and writing (in part because you also can’t see that far).  I guess that showcases some of the versatility of language and writing.  The idea that you and I  or you and Steven Pinker can be somewhere “together” separated by who knows how much time and space considering this or any other topic is a truly amazing idea.  Honestly, I think it is every bit as if not more profound than the internet, but it is certainly not as timely – which is why we are sitting down together “here” to discuss the internet and not writing.  The spoken word is up there too, but writing is what really kicked language and many other things into high gear – over time at least.

Language Wrap Up – 3 – A Guidebook to Internet Use Self-Assessment

We’re not QUITE ready to move on to the next iceberg just yet.  There are still some rather important things to say about language – and I’m sure I’ll just skip over a large number of other things that connoisseurs would likely spend a good deal of time discussing.  What I’m attempting to do with this trip down memory lane is to put the Internet into some semblance of the proper perspective.  If language was simply making word sounds that evoke mental images, that would be one thing.  That would simplify the transition to the internet significantly.  What I am saying is that if that were the case then writing a word (wait, we don’t know what writing is yet!) would be the same thing as speaking a word.  In a few cases, that is true, but in most cases words offer a narrative to another story being told by physical or other actions.  Your face tells a story.  Your hands and arms tell a story.  The snake that just slithered by tells a story.  Your words are likely an accompaniment to the symphony of information that is also occupying or passing through the space you and your audience are occupying or passing through at the moment.

If that weren’t enough, the use of language offers up other things – like common experience.  To make that even more powerful, you can use language to “experience” things you can’t experience in person, making a part of that a part of common experience.  I touched on the topic of passing down history and culture by word of mouth previously.  It is believed that much of common culture at least in the ruling classes was passed down by the use of professional storytellers or Bards.  They would make their living by traveling from place to place and performing the stories that represented common experience.  One would like to think that they were chosen for an uncommon ability to recall combined with a similarly uncommon ability to evoke the right images.  Their stories were also very likely tightly controlled by the elders from the class to whom they told their stories.  Of course other common experiences were passed down as well, and some of these would have persisted, but the most persistent would have tended to be the ones that were controlled and rewarded.  The point is that the abilities to communicate offered up through the use of language is immense.

Language Beginnings – 2 – A Guidebook to Internet Use Self-Assessment

That’s it.  That is the extent of unassisted communications, which I define as communication without invention.  You could even make the argument that both the physical and emotional forms of indirect communication discussed above are inventions – the idea that you don’t have to perform the act to communicate the act seems a pretty simple distinction.  As long as we know that it is not, we can probably save ourselves some quibble-time by grouping them as unassisted communication.

This seems a good point to move to the TECHNOLOGY of language.  The processes of an invention – the steps you follow to implement it, the materials you use, etc. – is by definition the technology of that invention.  If you haven’t already figured out why I bring this up, it will likely become clear fairly soon.

One can only imagine how our ancestors transitioned from the types of communication we’ve discussed to language.  So far what we’ve discussed were ways of communication that likely involved imitation of the sounds, appearance and actions of those things we were trying to describe in an attempt to evoke an image of that thing in someone else’s mind.  Who knows how long we existed in that state.  Remember, we didn’t know what we were missing but I imagine communication was slow and difficult.  All it really takes to start, though, is to agree among the individuals in your community  that sounds will mean certain things.  Simple, eh?  Actually, it likely happened very early on at the most basic of level as the community started to adopt shortcuts in their efforts at unassisted communication.  The need for communication efficiency – i.e. protecting your community, trying to tell the story of the hunt or the battle, etc. -  was likely what drove us to the first languages.  There were probably just about an many languages as there were small communities at first.  At some point, people either realized or perhaps it was simply a fact that a better language toward the simple end of a language could make a real difference.  Speed of learning, speed of actual communication, richness of communication, variety of meanings that can be conveyed, etc. are all factors and there are likely many more if you care to dig.

Now imagine a scenario – a community is in the process of being “convinced” to use one language over another.  It could be through conflict or it could be that the leaders of the group realized that they could be more effective in some way by using another language.  Parents and children and grandchildren and neighbors and their families have grown up using one language.  Now someone comes along and says the technology you were using is not good enough and we want you to start using the new technology.  Even though this is simply a new twist on the same fundamental technology, IMAGINE THE CONTROVERSY!  “I hear that the kids will be able to communicate things that they won’t be ready to communicate until they are much older,” and “If they learn this technology, our kids will be able to communicate with the kids across the valley, and you know what those kids do, don’t you?!”  I could go on, but I hope you get the picture, and the picture is the same (similar) again and again throughout history.  I’ll try not to do this to you again, but I hope you’ll carry this with you – our situation with “THE INTERNET” is not new.  It is unique and different, but so were the other inventions that caused varying levels of social turmoil.  The turmoil may indeed have been either good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, and there is a good chance that how each individual (was) prepared for it and how they approached the change made a difference in the outcome.  These new technologies probably won’t go away and we haven’t seen the last of them, so the best thing is to learn to use them to our advantage – right?  Well, I guess you don’t have to, but I will say that I believe you would be missing one heck of an opportunity (along with attendant risks of course).

Anyway – back to the story line.  We’re still in pre-history, right?  Probably.  At some point people began passing down history through the spoken word and we have at least vague outlines of a few that may have been enhanced to some degree or another (Homer, etc.).  History, culture, etc. was certainly passed from generation to generation (to generation…) somehow.  There are still some fairly significant things missing but I plan to try to get us back to the present fairly quickly.