To get crabs, therefore, is not simply a way to live my 70s Swinger Dream Realness, but to connect with the history of our species as I scratch an itch that transcends time.
So, in about six weeks, I’ll begin teaching an online course– Introduction to Language and Linguistics, aka, LING 101. The course is fully online asychonous, which means that students go through the course at a self-directed pace, so most of the lectures, readings, and grading are automated. It’s not quite that loose, but close enough. The course
Digital Humanities. Blah blah blah, digital humanities. This coming Wednesday, I’m going to put up this great post about how the notion of “Digital Literacy” isn’t really a kind of literacy at all. I’m going to play devil’s advocate and tell you that maybe people don’t need to learn how to code. I’m going to
“You’re a linguist? How many languages do you know?” It’s a pet-peeve of most linguists I know. There are support groups and memes and blog posts devoted to it (even, mind you, one of mine. *cough*). Linguists bluster in, “WE’RE LINGUISTS, DAMNIT! NOT POLYGLOTS! WE DON’T KNOW ANY LANGUAGES!” [insert Chomsky slam here] ANYWAY…
The Singularity is coming… …or so says Ray Kurzweil. And while technicians, sci-fi writers, and futurists quibble over the details of the Singularity, within these we find that fundamental questions remain unasked—questions so integral to Singularity Studies that, until they are answered, each talking point amounts to little more than piss in the theoretical river.
