Posthuman Language

From: Andrew Clough (aclough@mit.edu)
Date: Mon Nov 26 2001 - 20:28:45 MST


Some recent posts on communication and miscommunication on this list have
got me thinking about language. Have there been any discussions about new
languages for use by posthumans who aren't advanced enough to just drop
audio communication? Some who can hold more than 7+/- 2 things in short
term memory without chunking could use some pretty complex grammatical
structures to convey their equally complex thoughts. As Anders mentioned
in his recent post, having more tenses or modifiers for different types of
knowledge would also be good. So I could say that "MIT nu is in Cambridge"
for something that appears certain, or "chocolate mo is better than
vanilla" for something that is really subjective, or "Jessica nal is going
out with Billy" for something that my best friend's cousin's former
roommate heard in a bar. Over-engineering a language might lead to a lack
of flexibility, but I'm sure posthumans with suitably enhanced brains could
easily invent and learn new ones if they happened to make that mistake.



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