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.