From: mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere   
      
   Salvador Mirzo  writes:   
      
   > Mike Spencer  writes:   
   >   
   >> [snip]   
   >>       The command line is like language.   
   >>   
   >>       The GUI is like shopping.   
   >>   
   >> Reports from a very different domain (sorry, I forget the URLs) are   
   >> to the effect that university-level teachers of language & literature   
   >> find that students are wholly unprepared to read whole, long novels.   
   >> They just don't get it.  Somehow, despite having reached postsecondary   
   >> level, they don't have the attention span -- or can't call up the   
   >> intellectual resources to invoke the attention span -- to read   
   >> attentively something that goes on for a few hundred pages.   
   >>   
   >> [snip]   
   >   
   > I'm sorry for a follow-up with very little to add, but you really said   
   > everything.   
      
   Thank you.   
      
      
   > The command line is language.  And, yes, it turns out we   
   > have an entire population who don't master much language at all.  And I   
   > equate language with thinking.   
      
   I think language is what determined that homo became and remains   
   sapiens.  A vast corpus of neuroscience hasn't unravelled how language   
   originated or why other animals with complex brains don't have it.   
   Unless you're going to fall back on something mystical like "eternal   
   souls", language is what makes us what we are.   
      
      
   >  If you're thinking, you're using language....Anyway, this lack of   
   > intellectual abilities, which boils down to language, grammar skills   
   > has crept up even in the computer science graduate group, which is   
   > appalling.   
      
   The other side of the coin is people with the skill (or learned,   
   calculated ability) to persuade millions of others to do stupid stuff   
   using semantically vacuous language.  Now (YADATROT) you can devise   
   by trial and error algorithms or neural net constructs  to do it for   
   you.   
      
   Thirty years ago, I made jokes about "epistemogical engineering".  Now   
   epistemological engineering has probably doomed the world's most   
   powerful nation to chaos.   
      
   --   
   Mike Spencer                  Nova Scotia, Canada   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)