Langauge

After reading Heart of Darkness by Polish author Joseph Conrad, a realization dawned upon me: Joseph Conrad was a genius. Not because of his stories, his dialogue or anything like that, but because of his ability to navigate effortlessly through the English language. A plethora of writers can do that, but what baffles me about Joseph Conrad is that he can do this despite not beginning to learn the language until the age of 21, and we can only assume that he did not become fluent until much later.

But fluent is not enough if you want to write as well as he does. If you want to write as well as Joseph Conrad, you need be able to think in English. But how can he do this? You learn the most during your first 21-36 months of your life, so how could he become so adept at English when he learned it so late?

Some believe that once you can write in a certain language without having to translate every word, you think in the given language. I only partially agree. It is one thing to be able to do this, but it is another thing to think every single thought you think in a certain language. This must give you a different grasp of the language, than just occasionally writing in it. When reading Joseph Conrad, it seems like he has this grasp of the language.

The explanation to me is that during this thought process I simply misunderstood what learning your first language actually does. It seems like it is not about learning the words, the sounds and the specific constructions, but rather about learning a language. The thought processes and the ways to organize your thoughts is what is important when learning your first language and they are the same among all languages. Even sign. It is not so much about remembering specific sounds and constructions as it is about expanding your cognitive capacity and actually learning to think.

This means that once Joseph Conrad learned a language, and whenever he got better at it, it was not the specific words or grammar that were important it was the simple act of learning. The gains of learning were much deeper and much more universal than remembering some specific sayings or metaphors.

So when Joseph Conrad began dabbling in English, his writing skills were easily translated into this new language, which is why he could become so excellent so quickly.

ADDENDUM: My final thought: Is there a cognitive difference in which language you learn first? Some languages could in theory be more articulate, more efficient and simply more concise. Would this give you better tools to think than other languages would? For example, English has one of the biggest libraries of words of any language. Does this make it better than other languages? Would it be more beneficial to teach my newborn son English, Danish or Esperanto at birth?

My immediate answer would actually be "Yes", but the difference is probably minuscule.

One step closer

Google is opening a Web Store to collect web apps in one place:

What's the advantage of "installing" an app from Chrome Web Store?
When Google Chrome users "install" a web application from the store, a convenient shortcut is added for quickly accessing the app.

Now, this should give you a small glimpse into how Google and I see the future of the internet:

Gone are the cryptic URLS and gone is this page-by-page nonsense. Instead of writing a string of letters and numbers in a search bar and thereby navigating to a certain site, we are now presented with an online world much closer to that of our offline world. We have icons, we have shortcuts, we have depth and we have interactivity. We have spend years perfecting this offline world and now we are really beginning to perfecting the online world as well, slowly merging the interfaces.

Think of this scenario: What if, in Windows or OS X or linux, whenever you wanted to go to a folder or open a new app, you had to write the name of the folder/app and it's path in the terminal. What a waste of time, right? Well, that is where we are right now on the web. "Web pages" are not a necessity of the internet. I do not have 'pages' on my Snow Leopard OS so why would we not be able to get rid of pages on the internet as well? Why not take what we learned from the offline world and incorporate it into the online world?

What we will get in the near future is something much further away from the current "Type URL- go to site, type new URL- go to site". It is a more interactive and dynamic homepage. A mix between the current Chrome homepage, your desktop on your OS (folders etc) and a presentation of Applications. Much more intuitive, much more visual and much more relevant.

And that will just be the beginning. As Google has predicted, the browser is the new operating system.

EDIT: Need to clear up some misunderstandings. No, I am not saying that "search" or the address bar is gonna disappear. Search has not disappeared from the desktop environment and of course it will not disappear on the web. What I am saying is that the two worlds are becoming increasingly similar, and just as the average consumer does not go into terminal to navigate to a certain folder, in the same way he will not have to write and decipher the URLs of today.

The most important thought in recent tech-times

An absolute must-read. The quicker we get rid of "Files" and/or "folder hierarchy" the better.

Something that Microsoft, Google and maybe even Apple does not quite get yet.

Paul Graham on Taste

A must read for anyone interested in anything:

If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of people will tell you that "taste is subjective." They believe this because it really feels that way to them. When they like something, they have no idea why. It could be because it's beautiful, or because their mother had one, or because they saw a movie star with one in a magazine, or because they know it's expensive. Their thoughts are a tangle of unexamined impulses.

Visible Suspension of Particles in the Air - and what to do about it?

The obvious reason is Nicotine. It's effects are described here

But there are other, reasons for adults indulge in the vice of smoking cigarettes, and these reasons characterize two different groups:

First, the individuals who smoke simply because they enjoy life. This person enjoys fine food, good music and in this case, the sensation of warm, coarse smoke slowly entering and exiting his lungs. He enjoys manipulating the fumes, he enjoys the fondling of the cigarette, the stuffing of the pipe and the simple, yet entrancing, flicker of a match.

But why choose cigarettes when more fulfilling alternatives like cigars, pipe tobacco or even joints exist? Cost, accessibility and practicality.

To characterize the second group we must investigate why they began smoking in the first place. Bullet pointed:

1. Curiosity.

2. Group pressure.

3. Pop-culture and other phenomenons inspire enough to begin smoking. I.e. "coolness-factor".

Most of these are totally excusable reasons to begin smoking. It is part of human nature to be curious, to bow under to group pressure and to be influenced by the culture around us. Where the chain breaks is when the teen-smokers grow up and then continue smoking. They do not smoke because they enjoy it, they smoke because they have not had the will/strength/incentive to quit.

So, the question is not whether smoking is good or bad and should we allow/disallow it, the question is rather, how do we create a set of rules that fits these vastly different groups. There is no reason to punish the first group as they are more than aware of what they are doing and could, but will not, quit anytime. Why take away their freedom to indulge in something they enjoy? The second group, on the other hand, are not able to take care of themselves and need consumer-protection. They endanger themselves and their surroundings (Think of the children!), not because they enjoy what they are doing, but simply because they are addicted.

So, what do we do? If we disallow cigarettes, we punish the first group. If we keep allowing cigarettes, we let the second group punish themselves.

As I see it, the solution is to ban nicotine. From cigarettes, from pipe tobacco and from anything else except medications. Those who enjoy life and smoking will not be affected since they do not smoke because of addiction, but rather because of an appetite for life. The second group, those who smoke because of habit and addiction, will find it substantially easier to quit.

There are movements(WHO) advocating for this, but with a poor implementation. Their approach is to slowly reduce the amount of nicotine in tobacco, and hereby slowly decrease users dependence of nicotine. Clive Bates explains why this approach will not work:

The problem with the nicotine-removal [over-time] idea is that tobacco users would continue t seek nicotine up to the level that provides a satisfactory dose. This is the reason why ‘light’ cigarettes are such a fraud. With light cigarettes, the smoke is diluted with air drawn through ventilation holes in the filter, but smokers respond by taking in more of the weaker smoke to attain the nicotine they need. The machines used for measuring cigarettes do not respond in this way, so the light cigarettes give low tar and nicotine readings on machines but unchanged doses to the smoker. Switching from full-flavour cigarettes to light cigarettes is a little like trying to reduce alcohol intake by switching from wine to beer.

With light cigarettes the tobacco is almost the same as in conventional cigarettes, and an attempt to reduce its nicotine content would make matters worse: the smoke would not be diluted, but it would have a lower concentration of nicotine. This means smokers would be taking in more undiluted smoke to attain the nicotine they need. If this happened their toxic exposure would increase and the health impact would be serious — possibly adding millions to the expected tobacco-related death toll.

So, to avoid a period of half-assedness, nicotine should be banned immediately and entirely (medically supervised to ease users transition). And no, people would not flood to the illegal channels as they do during prohibitions, as nicotine does not actually do anything substantial but make you addicted.

post scriptum: It should be noted that the two groups described above are also recognized within drug users and consumers of alcohol. Sadly, the same solution to the problem is not available.