Re: [cybalist] Linguistic Mathematics?

From: Dennis Poulter
Message: 2266
Date: 2000-04-29

Thank you Piotr and Glen for your forthright views on glottochronology. As a non-academic I was rather diffident about being too dismissive of a methodology whose bases and mathematics I have never been able to fathom.
As for talking computers, I hadn't thought of Prof.Hawkins' speech synthesiser. I was thinking more of the work being done to have your car nag you about buckling your seat belt, or (for you Glen, from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) doors saying "Swish, thank you" when you walk through. Or, more seriously, being constrained to instruct computers verbally using something like COmmon Business Oriented Language, which may then spill over into everyday speech thus introducing "Newspeak" by a different route.
As for the beachballs, that would require a long (and to this group irrelevant) digression into late-sixties British TV culture with its plethora of sub-James Bond action heroes, and a background knowledge of that arch-icon of British fifties' conformism - the Holiday Camp. It made a kind of sense, in context.
 
Cheers
Dennis