Follow Mumbling Jack, my new blog

  • Lindens in Bloom - Lindens in Bloom It’s mid-July nowThe air is heavy and sweetWith linden flowers Their scent returns me to youIn Spring, among plum blossoms
    16 hours ago

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Languages, Etc.

Here's a jpeg of a chart showing the relationships of the world's languages. If I recall correctly, a character in Neal Stephenson's novel Cryptonomicon speaks Manx. Languages (and codes/programming) are recurring themes in Stephenson's fiction. In Snowcrash, Hiro Protagonist is confronted with a (Sumerian) meme which acts like a virus.

(I do like the idea of spoken languages being programming languages used for our wetware (brain/ nervous system).

In 1999, Stephenson wrote an online essay about proprietary operating systems, In the Beginning was the Command Line. It's a bit old now, but still worth reading. In the Beginning was updated in 2004 by Garrett Birkel (with Stephenson's permission).

No comments: