In the link above we see an image of an alphabet design by Godfrey Sykes. The depiction of workers crafting each letter carefully highlights the craftsmanship possible in font design as well as the constructed nature of these abstract symbols designed as tools to represent sounds and guide their articulation in speech. In their arbitrary Latinate shapes there is no other significance, a trait that limits what they can represent and express. Recent developments in digital technology remind us of this semantic limitation.

One of the most recent evolutions of Web 2.o is the development of “micro-blogging” sites, the most well-known of which is Twitter, where users can send a regular stream of brief personal updates in text and other media. Unlike a regular blog, micro-blogging messages, sometimes called “tweets” are often limited to 140 characters potentially posing a compositional challenge for more complex expressions. In a recent NPR story “Twitter Seen As Tool For Social Change in China” Li Zhuohuan, CEO of a Chinese micro-blogging company called Jawai, is counting on the Chinese enthusiasm for text-messaging to translate into a passion for micro-blogging.

 Though the Latin alphabet is that subtle and ancient elder from which many technologies evolved, this collection of arbitrary symbols of articulation is limited in its potential meaning by the abstract nature of the marks, known as phonemes, symbols representing speech sound. Chinese characters for example are not abstract phonemes but logograms, visual representations of whole words, concrete objects or concepts. Because of this, Zhuohuan notes that “posts to Jiwai are limited to 140 characters. But Li points out that 140 Chinese characters contain double or even triple the expressive power of the same thing in English”. 

We might regret micro-blogging’s reminder of the semantic deficits of the Latin alphabet, but we can rejoice in the simple design and convenience of its twenty-six characters in gratitude that we don’t have to navigate the thousands of characters used by the Chinese. And we thought the QWERTY keyboard was hard!

“hanzi” the ideogram for “Chinese character”
in traditional and simplified Chinese

How are we ‘written upon’ by our technologies and how can we avoid becoming Taylorized cogs in the rushing machine that is our culture?

You may not have time to read this, but if you seize it, you may find yourself in a new relationship with this valuable tool – a relationship that can decrease stress and increase creativity and even “productivity.” Now that we’re several centuries past the era when we began measuring ourselves and our accomplishments  according to mechanized time, it may seem too late or perhaps even quaint to reconsider our relationship to this man-made technology, but such reflection may be just what we need to step off the Jetson’s treadmill and into a more humane and appropriately paced future.

“Help! Jane! Stop this crazy thing!!” – who is in control here?

 

In his 1936 essay “The Olive Tree” Aldous Huxley notes that time as we experience it is a “byproduct of industrialism” and he asserts that “time is our tyrant.”  We might well consider how much we are tyrannized today with our  gaggle of gadgets that help us to schedule and connect with one another with increasing precision, packing ever more activity into the same solar cycle. While we generally grasp the positive utility of our time management tools, we rarely if ever consider how an increasing attention to time can become an obsession that undercuts our performance and our enjoyment of daily experience through embodied stress and blockage of creative thinking.

When it comes to education, sufficient time is essential. Unlike job training centers that claim to be “educators” and who proudly proclaim they can bring a student from “zero to Bachelor’s in 2.5 years,” a genuine liberal arts education requires a bit more time and a whole lot more thought and effort. Even if or when it becomes possible to buy a university education that can be simply “downloaded” into a student, the time compression would equal an elimination of a variety of valuable experiences and the resulting intellect would necessarily be shallower.

Sufficient time for reading, conversation and sustained reflection are as necessary to an effective education as they are to good writing. Our thoughts and writing do not fully mature when we do not allow them enough time to grow. Here is where we can use the tool of time to our greatest benefit. Instead of jamming our schedules with activity, we can discipline ourselves to reserve plenty of “growth time” that allows sufficient leisure for ideas and creative expression to flourish.

When rush important experiences and we allow ourselves to be herded into a chronological panic, we overlook things like the strings that are attached, or we forget the subtle, steady and ancient clock of the Sun that reminds us of a more universal perspective and puts our lives and “accomplishments” in a more realistic context. May we learn from Macbeth’s unsatisfied ambition and not be that “poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage” but rather let us stretch out our hours together on this Earth to maximize the joy and brilliance of human intellectual exploration and creativity while we have the chance….mind your business, be here now.

 For further inspiration to step off the Taylorized treadmill, check out Carl Honore’s 2004 book In Praise of Slowness.

Location: Rezzable’s Valley of the Kings in Open Sim

On my first tour of Rezzable’s Heritage Key site dedicated to King Tut, and when the entire project was quite new, I was taken by the South Wall of the young king’s tomb.

It was an immersive moment; I felt that I was as close to the actual site in Egypt as I’d ever get.

Anubis and Hathor greet Tut as he enters the other world, but Howard Carter had to destroy a figure of the goddess Isis (to the left of Anubis, in the image above) as he and this team made their way into the tomb. This struck me as a tragedy that might have been avoided.

With modern technology, we might have been able to plunder (there’s no kind word for it) the tomb without destroying Isis’ image. So I’ve decided to let my writing students have a crack at this. They’ll work in teams to solve the problem, if they can. And to make their writing “count for something” beyond a grade, I’ll have readers I invite vote for the strongest solution to this archeological dilemma.

Read the assignment here. Projects are due Oct. 29 and I’ll provide updates and may open up judging the projects to readers here. Meanwhile, my Heritage Key avatar will be bumbling around virtual Egypt, trying to look like the poor man’s Indiana Jones…