I've decided to start a new topic here called "Web
Semantics Watch," where I can keep track of such
phenomena as slang, argot, jargon, hype, buzztracking,
flarf poetry, tagging, folksonomies, neologisms, archeologisms,
and similar effects that the Web is having on language
and the generation of knowledge and meaning.
I was gonna call it "Semantic Web Watch," but
that term-of-art is already taken, and the "semantic web"
as a tech practice doesn't have much to do with what
I'm trying to explore here.
For my first entry we'll be using the peculiar service "BlogPulse"
to see what kind of effect, if any, all these busy ubicomp
and internet-of-things neologisms are having on
the contemporary "blogosphere."
http://www.blogpulse.com/
Go try this thing out, it's weirdly fascinating
(((Note that the vertical-axis scaling is not consistent.
Needs better graphic design.)))
"Spime"
"ThingLink"
"Ambient Findability"
"Everyware"
And, still toppin' the charts years later, the uncrowned
queen of contagious moral panics, "Monica Lewinsky"
Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
Languages
THERE are no handles upon a language
Whereby men take hold of it
And mark it with signs for its remembrance.
It is a river, this language,
Once in a thousand years
Breaking a new course
Changing its way to the ocean.
It is mountain effluvia
Moving to valleys
And from nation to nation
Crossing borders and mixing.
Languages die like rivers.
Words wrapped round your tongue today
And broken to shape of thought
Between your teeth and lips speaking
Now and today
Shall be faded hieroglyphics
Ten thousand years from now.
Sing–and singing–remember
Your song dies and changes
And is not here to-morrow
Any more than the wind
Blowing ten thousand years ago.
(((See, Carl, I'm still pretty much in your court
in the ten-thousand-year part and the hieroglyphics
dead-media business, but I'm pretty sure I've just
entered an epoch where there really ARE "handles
upon a language whereby men take hold of it."
Check out Google Zeitgeist, Carl: they're even
"marking it with signs for its remembrance."
Heck of a thing, huh? Is this great news for poetry?
Or, uh, what?)))
