Read Online The Information by James Gleick - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: James Gleick
Tags: Non-Fiction
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and common plants of error and conjecture.” ♦ A sorry place, neither magical nor divine.
Was McLuhan right, or was Hobbes? If we are ambivalent, the ambivalence began with Plato. He witnessed writing’s rising dominion; he asserted its force and feared its lifelessness. The writer-philosopher embodied a paradox. The same paradox was destined to reappear in different guises, each technology of information bringing its own powers and its own fears. It turns out that the “forgetfulness” Plato feared does not arise. It does not arise because Plato himself, with his mentorSocrates and his disciple Aristotle, designed a vocabulary of ideas, organized them into categories, set down rules of logic, and so fulfilled the promise of the technology of writing. All this made knowledge more durable stuff than before.
And the atom of knowledge was the word. Or was it? For some time to come, the word continued to elude its pursuers, whether it was a fleeting burst of sound or a fixed cluster of marks. “Most literate persons, when you say, ‘Think of a word,’ at least in some vague fashion think of something before their eyes,” Ong says, “where a real word can never be at all.” ♦ Where do we look for the words, then? In the dictionary, of course. Ong also said: “It is demoralizing to remind oneself that there is no dictionary in the mind, that lexicographical apparatus is a very late accretion to language.” ♦
----
♦ It is customary to transcribe a two-place sexagesimal cuneiform number with a comma—such as “7,30.” But the scribes did not use such punctuation, and in fact their notation left the place values undefined; that is, their numbers were what we would call “floating point.” A two-place number like 7,30 could be 450 (seven 60s + thirty 1s) or 7½ (seven 1s + thirty 1/60s).
♦ Not that Miller agrees. On the contrary: “It is hard to overestimate the subtle reflexive effects of literacy upon the creative imagination, providing as it does a cumulative deposit of ideas, images, and idioms upon whose rich and appreciating funds every artist enjoys an unlimited right of withdrawal.”
♦ The interviewer asked plaintively, “But aren’t there corresponding gains in insight, understanding and cultural diversity to compensate detribalized man?” McLuhan responded, “Your question reflects all the institutionalized biases of literate man.”
3 | TWO WORDBOOKS
(The Uncertainty in Our Writing, the Inconstancy in Our Letters)
In such busie, and active times, there arise more new thoughts of men, which must be signifi’d, and varied by new expressions.
—Thomas Sprat (1667) ♦
A VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER AND PRIEST made a book in 1604 with a rambling title that began “A Table Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard usuall English wordes,” and went on with more hints to its purpose, which was unusual and needed explanation: ♦
With the interpretation thereof by plaine English words, gathered for the benefit & helpe of Ladies, Gentlewomen, or any other unskilfull persons.
Whereby they may the more easily and better understand many hard English wordes, which they shall heare or read in Scriptures, Sermons, or elsewhere, and also be made able to use the same aptly themselves.
The title page omitted the name of the author, Robert Cawdrey, but included a motto from Latin—“As good not read, as not to understand”—and situated the publisher with as much formality and exactness as could be expected in a time when the
address
, as a specification of place, did not yet exist:
At London, Printed by I. R. for Edmund Weaver, & are to be sold at his shop at the great North doore of Paules Church.
CAWDREY’S TITLE PAGE
Even in London’s densely packed streets, shops and homes were seldom to be found by number. The alphabet, however, had a definite order—the first and second letters providing its very name—and that
Was McLuhan right, or was Hobbes? If we are ambivalent, the ambivalence began with Plato. He witnessed writing’s rising dominion; he asserted its force and feared its lifelessness. The writer-philosopher embodied a paradox. The same paradox was destined to reappear in different guises, each technology of information bringing its own powers and its own fears. It turns out that the “forgetfulness” Plato feared does not arise. It does not arise because Plato himself, with his mentorSocrates and his disciple Aristotle, designed a vocabulary of ideas, organized them into categories, set down rules of logic, and so fulfilled the promise of the technology of writing. All this made knowledge more durable stuff than before.
And the atom of knowledge was the word. Or was it? For some time to come, the word continued to elude its pursuers, whether it was a fleeting burst of sound or a fixed cluster of marks. “Most literate persons, when you say, ‘Think of a word,’ at least in some vague fashion think of something before their eyes,” Ong says, “where a real word can never be at all.” ♦ Where do we look for the words, then? In the dictionary, of course. Ong also said: “It is demoralizing to remind oneself that there is no dictionary in the mind, that lexicographical apparatus is a very late accretion to language.” ♦
----
♦ It is customary to transcribe a two-place sexagesimal cuneiform number with a comma—such as “7,30.” But the scribes did not use such punctuation, and in fact their notation left the place values undefined; that is, their numbers were what we would call “floating point.” A two-place number like 7,30 could be 450 (seven 60s + thirty 1s) or 7½ (seven 1s + thirty 1/60s).
♦ Not that Miller agrees. On the contrary: “It is hard to overestimate the subtle reflexive effects of literacy upon the creative imagination, providing as it does a cumulative deposit of ideas, images, and idioms upon whose rich and appreciating funds every artist enjoys an unlimited right of withdrawal.”
♦ The interviewer asked plaintively, “But aren’t there corresponding gains in insight, understanding and cultural diversity to compensate detribalized man?” McLuhan responded, “Your question reflects all the institutionalized biases of literate man.”
3 | TWO WORDBOOKS
(The Uncertainty in Our Writing, the Inconstancy in Our Letters)
In such busie, and active times, there arise more new thoughts of men, which must be signifi’d, and varied by new expressions.
—Thomas Sprat (1667) ♦
A VILLAGE SCHOOLMASTER AND PRIEST made a book in 1604 with a rambling title that began “A Table Alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard usuall English wordes,” and went on with more hints to its purpose, which was unusual and needed explanation: ♦
With the interpretation thereof by plaine English words, gathered for the benefit & helpe of Ladies, Gentlewomen, or any other unskilfull persons.
Whereby they may the more easily and better understand many hard English wordes, which they shall heare or read in Scriptures, Sermons, or elsewhere, and also be made able to use the same aptly themselves.
The title page omitted the name of the author, Robert Cawdrey, but included a motto from Latin—“As good not read, as not to understand”—and situated the publisher with as much formality and exactness as could be expected in a time when the
address
, as a specification of place, did not yet exist:
At London, Printed by I. R. for Edmund Weaver, & are to be sold at his shop at the great North doore of Paules Church.
CAWDREY’S TITLE PAGE
Even in London’s densely packed streets, shops and homes were seldom to be found by number. The alphabet, however, had a definite order—the first and second letters providing its very name—and that
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