From: csv09@seq1.cc.keele.ac.uk (Barton LJ)
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Linguistic/conceptual interferance
Date: 22 Aug 92 21:22:17 GMT
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	        'There's someone in my head and it's not me...'
							      (Dr Morbus)

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   HIGH THERE...
                Yes, it's me again...the human virus...

   During my brief sojourn in foreign climes I made a comment to my
girlfriend which struck her as extremely strange...not that that's
unusual in itself, but it set me thinking. 

   Over the last few years an idea has been struggling to make itself 
heard above all the background noise in my mindscape, but only recently
succeeded...The signal to noise ratio there is very low indeed...That 
idea was merely that it is interesting to note what effect the course of
study/career that someone pursues has upon the mindscape they inhabit, by
littering it with mental constructs from what they see/hear/read/discuss
etc. 

   Another idea I have been toying with is that language determines to a
very large extent, if not completely, the concepts we can access.

   As a result of my recent comment to my girlfriend I was able to
discern the first idea properly for the first time and find a concrete
example of the second.

   The comment was made whilst cycling through a nature reserve. The
fields were swarming with crickets. The noise was incredible. I turned
to her and said "Listen to the noise those crickets are making...It
sounds just like the hum of overhead power cables." She thought it a
very strange analogy.

   Years ago I discovered that if I exercised a certain amount of
imagination the roar of traffic on a motorway sounds just like the roar
of the sea.

   What strikes me as fascinating is the way that my mind compares
natural and artificial phenomena and draws analogies between phenomena
of the two different categories, that is I make intercategorical
comparisons, but not intracategorical ones.

   The two ideas set me in mind of comments I made some time ago, which
obviously result from my interest in computer technology and are 
influenced by my pursual of a course of study in Computer Science: Putting
something large down in the kitchen, and intending to leave it there for
a while, I said "Does anyone want to access the fridge in the near
future ?" Another time, after someone, I forget who, expressed astonishment
at the amount I had eaten I said "Yes, I'm sometimes amazed by the
amount I can save" (Save in the sense of save a file...I origonally made
the comment in German, in which the verb 'speichern' is obviously a
computer technology term).

   So, in the same vein as S. Christopher Best's 'alternative approach',
I would be interested to hear of other peoples' experience of analogies
drawn, or language used, which were obviously influenced by the
technology of the world we live in and the mindscape in which they
operate. 

   Cyberpunk ? Dunno...I feel intuitively that this kind of thread would
be since it is an examination of the effects of technology upon the
mind, but, as usual, others may disagree...It could be interesting to
pursue though, in any case.

   Any takers ?


	Cheers,	
		Lol    (Freelance thinker and imagineer)


                (COINCIDENCE  You weren't paying attention to
              the other half of what was going on.
                             --'The Hipcrime Vocab' by Chad C. Mulligan)


		    Do you REALLY know what's going on ?
Newsgroups: alt.cyberpunk