In other news: I found a blog that is stunningly bizarre. Go take a look at it. I dare you. [Update: the link is dead. The strange blog has disappeared. Which supports the spam theory, below.]
OK then. I’d like to hope that it is some kind of strange inside joke. Or the product of a random text generator of some kind, like that Kant engine I found some time back (see my blog entry from 2006.05.02). Or, at the least, I hope it is the output of some weird automated translation engine, from some profoundly syntactically un-English language.
Actually, I think it must be the output of some kind of automated, text-spewing tool: a database-driven textual abstraction engine of some kind? a spider-phisher (meaning a tool for attracting the attention of automated internet indexers, such as Google)?
But part of me enjoys imagining that there is a real, human author of the blog, who is actually sharing the poorly edited contents of his/her actual brain. I mean… what a remarkably strange brain that must be, to be inside of!
Actually, another thought occurs to me: this is an emergent symptom of a new, global, incipient cybersubconscious. Immanent (imminent?) oversoul of humankind. I’m sure some of you will be quite skeptical… but let’s think about it.
The internet today is an almost unmeasurably large text. Borges’s infinite library, maybe. But it is not just a passive text, sitting there for all of us internet-connected readers to read. It is also inhabited by a seething, swarming plethora of text-reading and text-generating machines (e.g. google-spiders and spambots, respectively). A vast ecosystem of predators and prey, living and dying, battling and fortifying, all in a text-based universe. The word made virtual flesh, but not incarnate. There be dragons.
So it is an unmeasurably large text in constant dialogue with itself – if not particularly self-aware dialogue, if not particularly meaningful dialogue, it is nevertheless a huge babbling demon. A giant idiotic infinitely schizophrenic mind. Grendel ruminates incoherently in his deep. The internet becomes humanity collectively dreaming.
Day: October 18, 2007
Caveat: “리케티”
The above hangul reads: "riketi."
At the school, when students take their daily vocabulary quizzes, they are required to write glosses into Korean of the words on the quiz (among other things, e.g. on my quizzes I have them "use the word in a sentence"). Obviously when I grade these quizzes, I don't pay much attention to these Korean meanings written off to the side, given it would be time-consuming to "translate back" from Korean and try to verify they'd gotten it right. So normally I don't really look at them – if something's written, I'll give a point.
But the above leaped out at me – because the English word on the quiz was "rickety." And the sentence that was given was one of those "empty" sentences, e.g. "I like rickety" (these are very common when the student doesn't know the word: they're gambling that they can say something that makes sense by plugging the word into something common and generic).
So what the student had done was merely transliterate the English word back to Korean. I love turning things like this into subjects of classroom discussion – I wrote the answer on the board (without revealing the student's name, so as to avoid embarrassing him) and asked the class generally what this meant: "리케티".
I think the students are still not used to the idea that a foreigner knows any Korean at all. They seem newly amazed each time I reveal my ability to sort out the hangul syllabary. So there was a collective gasp of admiration as I wrote the word on the board. But then several students burst out laughing. I felt relief – they found it funny, too. The clever student's effort to "slip one past" was appreciated by his peers. I wasn't putting it on the board to shame anyone – I just thought it was funny and clever and that's what I said.
Well, after that, class went on.