Language, Hope and Obama’s Muse
Posted on | November 15, 2008 | No Comments
In an extraordinary piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Lee Siegel pulls quote from an older Time magazine piece. In it, President-elect Obama reflects on a portait of Lincoln he had hanging in his office:
“In it, Lincoln’s face is as finely lined as a pressed flower. He appears frail, almost broken; his eyes, averted from the camera’s lens, seem to contain a heartbreaking melancholy, as if he sees before him what the nation had so recently endured. It would be a sorrowful picture except for the fact that Lincoln’s mouth is turned ever so slightly into a smile. The smile doesn’t negate the sorrow. But it alters tragedy into grace. It’s as if this rough-faced, aging man has cast his gaze toward eternity and yet still cherishes his memories — of an imperfect world and its fleeting, sometimes terrible beauty. On trying days, the portrait, a reproduction of which hangs in my office, soothes me; it always asks me questions.”
His language and oratory are breathtaking in the age of the Internet and IM and email, of thumb-nail thinking of “red” and “blue,” “left” and “right.” He understands innately that our complex world can’t be boiled down into sound bytes, Tweets, and IM slang but it can (and must) be articulated, eloquently.
Here’s hoping we as a culture take a breath and take the time to read and listen to the thoughtful articulations that could serve as the map-tracings of our path out of the wilderness.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Related posts:
- Does news matter? Let’s hope so-Part 3
- Does news matter? Let’s hope so-Part 2
- The joy of books
- Does news matter? Let’s hope so
Comments
No Responses to “Language, Hope and Obama’s Muse”
Leave a Reply
November 17th, 2008 @ 9:20 am
Check out the reviews for complex new books like 2666 or Against the Day. Even if a writer tried to emulate Dickens, he/she would be shot down by snipers saying, “Ewww, too complicated, that sentence is over 15 words long!” It’s not just that no one writes like they did in the Victorian era, readers don’t want to read like they did back then.
November 18th, 2008 @ 4:05 pm
That doesn’t surprise you in the Twitter Era, does it? I’m working on strategies to make social media news releases even shorter and simpler.
Eventually our culture will complete the circle: we’ll be back to grunts and images to communicate.
November 19th, 2008 @ 9:36 am
Digital words are now the most common form of widely distributed expression.
As a such this form of expression could easily take on 100′s of possible meanings, depending on the language of the reader, situation, and context. The technology used today means our everyday words can go just about anywhere, including leaving ‘our world’ as we know it with the use of the Internet in space and unintended signal transmissions.
A single word is technically a well bounded expression. But we can use the English language as a good example of how even a single word twit takes on unintended expressive complexity. This is particularly relevant given the medium we use, and possibility a reader might translate our written words or use different types of robotic speakers.
For example the words Black or white have many different noun groups, adjectives, types of verbs and context. The possible number and type of computerized “digital word” translators in common use means our online words and sentences, even short ones, can end up having unbounded complexity.
A conclusion could be made that there is a clear and growing need for crisp annunciation with eloquent articulation. Unless of course your audience is “just” the abbreviated “give me only the jest” type, or a computer program capable of parsing Dickens.
Here is a link to YouTube that provides quick example of robotic translation technology.
As social media junkies we may need to consider all possibilities. Would you agree?
November 19th, 2008 @ 10:20 am
I think somebody’s devised a phrase-generating machine that stitches together pseudo-random phrases successfully enough to get past spambots, but not successfully enough to make sense.
November 19th, 2008 @ 10:21 am
I meant to say “spam filters”, not “spambots”
November 19th, 2008 @ 11:27 am
Sounds like the best guess to me, Brian. If not, the person seriously needs to stop twittering and start living.
December 23rd, 2008 @ 8:43 pm
runescape money runescape gold runescape money buy runescape gold buy runescape money runescape money runescape gold wow power leveling wow powerleveling Warcraft Power Leveling Warcraft PowerLeveling buy runescape gold buy runescape money runescape itemsrunescape accounts runescape gp dofus kamas buy dofus kamas Guild Wars Gold buy Guild Wars Gold lotro gold buy lotro gold lotro gold buy lotro gold lotro gold buy lotro gold runescape money runescape power leveling runescape money runescape gold dofus kamas cheap runescape money cheap runescape gold Hellgate Palladium Hellgate London Palladium Hellgate money Tabula Rasa gold tabula rasa money Tabula Rasa Credit Tabula Rasa Credits Hellgate gold Hellgate London gold wow power leveling wow powerleveling Warcraft PowerLeveling Warcraft Power Leveling World of Warcraft PowerLeveling World of Warcraft Power Leveling runescape power leveling runescape powerleveling eve isk eve online isk eve isk eve online isk tibia gold Fiesta Silver Fiesta Gold
Age of Conan Gold
buy Age of Conan Gold
aoc gold
呼å¸æœº
æ— åˆ›å‘¼å¸æœº
家用呼å¸æœº
呼å¸æœº
家用呼å¸æœº
美国呼å¸æœº
篮çƒåŸ¹è®
篮çƒåŸ¹è®ç
篮çƒå¤ä»¤è¥
china tour
beijing tour
beijing travel
china tour
tibet tour
tibet travel
computer monitoring software
employee monitoring