The Resurrection of the Printed Book

Kenneth Goldsmith proclaims in The Artful Accidents of Google Books that "the book is far from dead: it's returning in forms that few could ever have imagined." The Art of Google Books, a Tumblr that collects strange and unusual errors found in the Google Books Archive, is just one of many examples Goldsmith highlights where these technological errors in systems take on new aesthetic forms.

The many examples of projects created on the basis of these errors was really captivating for me. Why are these errors so interesting? Is it because we think technology is never supposed to mess up? Or because we often confide in technology as if it is a more accurate depiction of life than reality itself? These were just a few questions I asked myself when reading Goldsmith's article and looking through the projects he describes.

Goldsmith suggests that the obsession with digital errors comes from the sense that these errors are on record and that they are permanent. For example, at such a massive scale of scans, Google is never going to go back and fix these errors because there are too many of them in Google Books. It would simply be impossible to do so and therefore, the errors will remain there, waiting for someone to find them like a new age scavenger hunt.

I think what is most interesting about these digital errors though is that they only exist the moment when technology and humanity intersect.

Must Speak Internet

How can one determine what the language of the present is? In order to know what exactly is the language of the present, isn’t only necessary to look at the language of the past? Let’s face it, no one talks like Shakespeare today. But is this a good or bad thing? Have we downgraded? I feel as though a major cause of the shift in our use of language today was the Internet. Is the internet then the root of our degradation of language?

There was a point starting in the late 90s when the internet was gaining popularity that it was the trend to shorten and abbreviate everything. Internet slang was developed to ease communication, but has it really? I guess it was faster to type ’ ur’ rather than ‘your.’ But with the fastness and easiness of this new slang comes consequences. These consequences are the loss of grammatical rule. Although it is still the trend to shorten words, I think people are beginning to revive the grammar part of language again. I feel like abbreviations and shortened words are less seen than when the Internet first began. I will openly admit that I still use ‘lol’ on a daily basis even when I am not even physically laughing. Some of this Internet slang that is now inherited in the generations around it may never go away.

I am speaking about language in relationship with the internet because that is where I believe language is the most dominant these days and there is many areas of the internet where this is proven. Just look at the hashtag phenomenon. People hashtag complete phrases today. The hash symbol was often used in information technology to highlight a special meaning. Look how the symbol has evolved.  Completely going against what the hash was originally used for, people now hashtag anything and everything. How can this function in the organization system that hashtags were intended for? Is there a limit to how much we can hashtag? Will this system of organization end in a complete chasm in internet databases?

I believe language is more cultural today than at any other periods throughout history. In order to truly understand the language of a specific culture, one must adopt or be conscious of their cultural surroundings. If you do not keep up with viral videos, memes, images, news, etc. surrounding social media than you my not understand what people are talking about. These forces of social media are what give cultural events importance. Social media is really what drives present day language.