Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[Ken Armstrong <kennenathens AT frontier.com>]

Thanks for that link, I haven't had a good laugh out loud for a while. If you watch for a minute or two following the disappearing language clip, you'll see an ad for a band (with a light on it!) that you wear on your forehead to improve your thinking. Hang in there. The lapsometer is next.

Apparently there are a few people on this list who may remember how in the '50s and '60s there was much handwringing over the television obsoleting the book. Still -- after computers, the internet, ebooks -- hasn't happened. I remember friends in the '80s who were outright glum over the sure disappearance of books. The newspapers (ironically) were full of it. Elon Musk is reacting the way people always have with new technologies. Give him credit for his money and his can-do attitude, but don't get carried away. Somewhere Walter Ong notes how the camera obscura was seen in its time as the model for how the brain works; more recently the computer had quite a run of advocates proclaiming the same thing for it and ultimately its superiority to the brain. As the guys in my prison classes used to say when asked what's new, "Same old same old."

On 5/10/2020 10:20 AM, Marcus Smith wrote:

CAPUDd1JXty96N77YSqHFHRWm8PaZeC68MuTydVEh7rJhKu8i+g AT mail.gmail.com">

Elon Musk says speech and human language in final years.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/elon-musk-joe-rogan-podcast-language-neuralink-grimes-baby-a9506451.html

Musk seems as big a narcissist as Trump, but Percy would have read the article and had something to say.  Can’t begin to guess what he would have said.  

Why do I recall Umberto Eco’s definition of the “sign”?  Anything that can be used to tell a lie.  

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