Writing – Page 54 – a sibilant intake of breath

Unlettered society

My ongoing fruitless search for lined correspondence paper has hammered home the degree to which letters have faded from our society. Not even specialized paper stores have ordinary letter paper for sale, it seems. This is no surprise, really, given how much more immediate and immersive other forms of communication are. The societal forces at work lead me to wonder whether we are even capable of writing letters anymore.

There was a long span of time during which letters were the only low-cost means of maintaining personal relationships at a distance. This began in the ancient world (though only because popular with the rise of mass literacy) and persisted until the rise of affordable long-distance telephone calls and the internet. Now, there are a myriad of more rapid and personal ways through which to exchange all manner of personal thoughts and information. Email was the dirt on top of the well-nailed coffin: allowing people the permanence and clarity of written language in a much quicker and more versatile way. Now, every office tower is stuffed with BlackBerried workers.

Yet the letter persists as an aesthetic ideal. People value them because of the time they take to construct and their enduring quality. I still have letters that Kate wrote me a decade ago. Still, I wonder whether people who are utterly acquainted with rapid communication are generally capable of writing things in a style suited to this slow and permanent route. Our communication styles have simply become too dynamic – we expect things to change quickly and for responses to be fluid. At the same time, all but a tiny minority of people have become utterly unpracticed in letter writing. Just as poetry and public speaking are no longer taught as a skill in schools, so too has letter writing been marginalized due to a lack of need and a lack of practice.

Overall, I cannot help but think this is a change for the better. People can remain in contact more vividly and extensively, despite how they tend to have groups of friends who are ever more spread out. Letter writing is destined to become an occasional curiosity – like the ‘paper making’ workshops that sometimes happen in elementary schools or craft stores (usually just re-assembling cut up bits of previously made paper). Hopefully, people who are engaging in the kind of correspondence that will eventually be published in books (if those do not vanish as well) have been keeping accessible and reliable paper copies. Digital media are fickle, and it would be rather tragic to lose such a historical record to failed hard drive bearings and changed file formats.

Voice echoing off cave walls

Posting two entries a day with little or no personal content is: (a) time consuming and (b) seemingly uninteresting to the long-suffering readers of this blog. As such, I am declaring one post a day to be the standard, with unlimited allowance for additional posts if I feel inspired.

Sometimes, it is hard to know if anyone is even reading. If you have been, but you never leave comments, I would really appreciate if you did so here.

Oryx and Crake

Margaret Atwood‘s novel, which was short-listed for the Booker Prize, portrays a future characterized by the massive expansion of human capabilities in genetic engineering and biotechnology. As such, it bears some resemblance to Neal Stephenson‘s The Diamond Age, which ponders what massive advances in material science could do, and posits similar stratification by class. Of course, biotechnology is an area more likely to raise ethical hackles and engage with the intuitions people have about what constitutes the ethical use of science.

Atwood does her best to provoke many such thoughts: bringing up food ethics, that of corporations, reproductive ethics, and survivor ethics (the last time period depicted is essentially post-apocalyptic). The degree to which this is brought about by a combination of simple greed, logic limited by one’s own circumstances, and unintended consequences certainly has a plausible feel to it.

The book is well constructed and compelling, obviously the work of someone who is an experienced storyteller. From a technical angle, it is also more plausible than most science fiction. It is difficult to identify any element that is highly likely to be impossible for humanity to ever do, if desired. That, of course, contributes to the chilling effect, as the consequences for some such actions unfold.

All in all, I don’t think the book has a straightforwardly anti-technological bent. It is more a cautionary tale about what can occur in the absence of moral consideration and concomitant regulation. Given how the regulation of biotechnology is such a contemporary issue (stem cells, hybrid embryos, genetic discrimination, etc), Atwood has written something that speaks to some of the more important ethical discussions occurring today.

I recommend the book without reservation, with the warning that readers may find themselves disturbed by how possible it all seems.

Biotechnology and Canadian novelists

Nearly done with the book, it seems fair to say that Oryx and Crake is the kind of novel that demonstrates how fiction can better educate a person for the future than textbooks or well-meaning non-fictional treatises.

It’s an ugly and disturbing book, but it may also be an important one.

The grammar of data and datum

Sticklers for proper grammar are fond of pointing out how frequently people misuse the word ‘data.’ A ‘datum’ is singular; data are plural. The Economist Style Guide (a companion on my desk) explains:

Data and media are plural. So are whereabouts. Teams that take the name of a town, country or university are plural, even when they look singular: England were bowled out for 56.

Law and order defies the rules of grammar and is singular.

While this may be technically accurate, it has always clashed with my intuition – and not only because those who supposedly use the term incorrectly far outnumber whose who follow grammarian cant.

The question for me is whether ‘data’ is more like cats or more like water. The cats are increasingly annoyed about all this talk of grammar, but they remain distinct, countable, independent entities. The water, by contrast, is salty, ever-present, and part of an amalgamated mass. I may have seen Ghost in the Shell a few too many times, but the data-water equivalency long since became firmly entrenched for me.

Two orbits

Just a word in passing: this phase in the long history of my blog has now run for two full years. a sibilant intake of breath first emerged on this day, back in 2005. Since then, I have started and finished an M.Phil at Oxford and moved into a relevant and interesting job. I wonder where I will find myself two years hence.

Tricky bits of language

Living in Ottawa frequently involves encountering people speaking French. While I have been reasonably fluent at times, most of my felicity has been sapped by lack of use. There are many areas of grammar, syntax, and vocabulary that make me feel uncertain and amateur.

In English, there are relatively few such areas. Only two really stand out as perpetually confusing for me:

I can never remember the proper use the subjunctive. I have never understood it, correctly structured phrases employing it still sound incorrect, and the Wikipedia entry is bewildering. As such, I avoid using the subjunctive altogether. I am in good company, at least. Somerset Maugham is reputed to have said: “The subjunctive mood is in its death throes, and the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery as soon as possible.”
The other is the interaction of apostrophes and the letter ‘s’ in situations where words end in ‘s’ naturally. It gets no more confusing than when you have a word that always ends in ‘s,’ is being made plural, and is a possessive. For instance: “The different species’ characteristics can be easily distinguished.” I always feel inclined to say (and write) spee-sea-ze-ze-ze.

Without a doubt, I have looked up the proper usage of each of these dozens of times. The explanation is just very reluctant to stay in my brain. Not even reading Lynn Truss’ Eats, Shoots & Leaves has provided any lasting understanding.

Transitioning from transition

After a month on the job, this no longer feels like a “weblog in transition.” As such, I need to come up with a new secondary title. Given how it is the first piece of information most people absorb about the site – after a general appreciation for the layout and style – it is important to tune correctly. Given the diverse areas of interest explored here, I am not sure what would be most suitable. What I do know is that I don’t want it to mention my area of employment, because I do not to be an important feature of what happens here.

Do people have any suggestions? The cleverer the better. Work is also being done on a new banner.

Cognitive dissonance

One of the odd things about reading The Economist recently is seeing the extent to which their commitment to reason and the impartial consideration of scientific facts is clashing with their long-held views about economic growth. So far, their considerations of how ecological issues – especially climate change – impact their core philosophy has been fleeting and confined to the margins. This article on air travel is a good example.

Imagine, however, that they played some of the ideas through. What would their next Survey on Business look like if they really accepted that mass air travel is climatologically and morally unacceptable?

Ottawa blogs

Within a few months of arriving in Oxford, I had sorted out which blogs were worth reading. So far, I have not stumbled across any good Ottawa blogs. Does anybody know of any? Environment blogs, photo blogs, food blogs, travel blogs – all of these are potentially interesting. Personal blogs are better than pundit blogs. High quality writing is the key factor, along with some local information.