serendipity
So I’ve been watching a lot of videos from TED recently; I posted one about historical levels of violence to my tumblelog a couple of days ago.
Another interesting one is this bubbly talk about dictionaries:
She makes a lot of interesting points, but I couldn’t help noticing she also makes a common blunder: she states that online dictionaries, compared to paper ones, lose the quality of serendipity.
I’ve heard this complaint about the internet before, and it just floors me. The internet is the greatest possible engine of serendipity. (I’m pretty sure I stole that line from somewhere, btw)
I recently tested a youtube-esque video service being tested by my department at work; I uploaded an Alison Krauss video I happened to have on my machine. This led me to visit her official website, which, like most musician’s sites, kind of sucks for content. This led me, of course, to the real live YouTube, where I searched for Alison Krauss, saw a video in the search results titled “Cluck Old Hen-Alison Krauss/Sierra Hull“, was duly impressed, and followed a link to a “related” video called “sierra hull playing roanoke on guitar”:
I had never heard of Sierra Hull, and now I’m serioiusly considering buying her album. How is that less serendipity than I would experience in the real world, say by flipping through the racks at a record store? A given store might not even have Sierra’s album, and anyway, I don’t visit record stores.
An online dictionary has the potential for great serendipity — just let the page for an individual entry show content from nearby entries; define “nearby” not just by spelling but by definition (i.e., thesaurus functionality), language of origin or other etymological info, or even obscure academic measurements of lexical distance. Add in a “random word” or “word of the day” feature.
All the serendipity you could ask for, says me.
I agree. Especially about the “word of the day” feature. I love getting words especially from wordsmith.org. And in another instance of internet serendipity, I found out about Anu Garg’s new book, “The Dord, the Diglot, and an Avocado or Two: The Hidden Lives and Strange Origins of Common and Not-So-Common Words.” Can’t wait to buy it! (Yes, I am a nerd.)
Sounds cool, I’ll have to look that up.
Have you read Vellum, by Hal Duncan? I’m 9/10 finished. Lots of stuff about the power of words and language, using the me of the Sumerian god Enki as one of the archetypes, as did Neal Stephenson in Snow Crash. But where Snow Crash was all literal and action-movie-ish, Vellum is dreamlike, symbolism-oriented. Both books have substantially re-wired my brain, I think.
Oh, and to continue a comment from another post… I could have sworn you recommended Jumper, around the same time you recommended the His Dark Materials series. Did that part really happen, or was it the voices in my head or something?
Don’t worry. You’re not certifiable. (Yet.) I really did recommend His Dark Materials. I just finished re-reading those. Awesome. And no, I haven’t read Vellum, but I’m loving the title. And I had one more book question for you: is the latest Thursday Next book good? It’s been ages since I read his last one and I’m not sure if I’ll be totally in the dark with this new one since I think I’ve forgotten too much. Does the book catch you up at all? I’ve delayed buying it because of that. I might have to go and kill some time in the bookstore skimming the series to refresh my memory. Also, I found a new favorite author. Sarah Waters! (Holly, you would like her too. Maybe, even more so than Jack.) Her books also have a few great BBC adaptations that you can rent on netflix.) Anyways, I love your “tumbly log,” Jack. It’s a great resource.
Yeah, I’m afraid the new Thursday Next book didn’t really light any fires for me. It’s hard for me to put my finger on why, exactly, but it left me a little deflated. Maybe it would have been a good idea, as you suggest, to spend some time catching up first; less hopefully, maybe the premise is just getting a little tired. I’m sure I’ll still pick up whatever Fforde publishes next, though, so take my doom and gloom with a grain of salt.