language
a beautiful passage from sublime’s innaugural zine on why language matters, in the context of building a different web.
The more powerful communication technologies become, the more people will fight wars over words instead of territory. Language, when wielded at scale, is among man's most powerful weapons.
To give birth, to nourish,
to bear and not to own,
to act and not lay claim,
to lead and not to rule:
this is mysterious power.
to bear and not to own,
to act and not lay claim,
to lead and not to rule:
this is mysterious power.
Maria Popova • A Small Dark Light: Ursula K. Le Guin on the Legacy of the Tao Te Ching and What It Continues to Teach Us About Personal and Political Power 2,500 Years...
Protagoras observed a strange paradox about language. Despite the perpetual flux and change of the physical world, language lends the mistaken impression that the world is not in flux, that it is stable. As the Presocratic philosopher Empedocles had observed only a few years before, ‘there is no birth for any mortal thing, nor any cursed end in
... See moreRobin Reames • Ancient Greek Antilogic Is the Craft of Suspending Judgment
As we are fed more content, we are pushed deeper into algorithmic niches. In return, we are encouraged to engage with more extreme and polarizing identifiers because it is more labelable, more indexable by the machine — the creation of the “Island". On this island, the slang, in-jokes, and archetypes which emerge as a community develops in... See more