From: Kennita Watson (kwatson@netcom.com)
Date: Mon Oct 06 1997 - 21:52:01 MDT
Dan Clemmensen wrote:
> We are now confronting the near-term possibility
>of remodelling our brains, via uploading or computer augmentation.
>Will we need new linguistic constructs to use the new hardware
>effectively? can we get some idea of what we need before the
>hardware is available. This is roughly analogous to designing
>a new higher-level computer language in conjunction with a
>new processor.
English doesn't handle different forms of concurrency well. Pretty
much we have "while", "during", and such. What about ways of expressing
doing multiple things at once in "task-sliced" vs. "time-sliced"
concurrency modes? And if there are multiple copies of you in constant
communication, you'll probably want ways to refer to your various points
of view and their intersection/union while at the same time preserving
your sense of identity (whatever that is -- different discussion).
What about expressing multivariable dynamically-changing probabilities?
What about ways of expressing the passage of time for one of you that's
still and another of you that's moving at .99c, when you're "talking to
yourself"?
Personally, I've always been at a loss for ways to adequately express
joy and wonder, and I could hope that a new language would help with
that, too....
Kennita
Kennita Watson | The bond that links your true family is not one of blood,
kwatson@netcom.com| but of respect and joy in each other's life. Rarely do
| members of the same family grow up under the same roof.
| -- Richard Bach, _Illusions_
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