Over at …eats bugs. there is a post about a speech Larry Lessig gave at TED. Go there, watch the video. He says please, I will issue imperatives. But open it in a new window, I’m not done here. So then I went over to www.TED.com where there are so many videos on such an amazing array of topics, I don’ think I can begin to pull it all in. It is awe-inspiring. It puts me in mind of how Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulu begins:
…Some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality… the we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.
It’s rather refreshing to think there are enoughs others out there, enough for this conference to exist, who find the madness exciting. Along with Larry Lessig’s talk about copyright, Malcolm Gladwell talks about pasta sauce, Steven Pinker talks about veiled threats, and Erin McKean talks about the nature of the dictionary and the English Language. On the one hand, she gave an eminently quotable talk but on the other she seemed so excited about her topic (not an entirely bad thing) it didn’t seem reality could keep up with her. But you have to give mad props to anyone who uses the word “synecdochically.” The title of this post is a quote from her speech which I’ve embedded below.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4VzuWmN8zY]
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I just watched that video this morning. Again, so wonderful!
I did think she got a little carried away with her cute comments, but overall, she has a nice idea. I like the idea of being allowed to create words and reuse vocabulary to fit our needs and personalities. After all, language is just a series of codifications and learn to mill through to collect meaning. That said, instead of feeling like we are limited by the colloquialisms of today’s youth and subcultures, we are really just revolutionizing language to fit an ever evolving landscape of knowledge.
And it seems there will always be people around to remember the “big words,” if not the old ones.