When is the last time you saw a buttercup? When was the last time you saw a blog?
Language and its usage are quickly changing. Nowhere is this point made so acute as in the new Oxford Junior Dictionary. (Source: Globe and Mail)
We just don’t see things in nature that often. I have never actually seen a beaver before, even though it is such a great Canadian symbol, but I’ve said and experienced “broadband” on a more than daily basis.
Hilarious, sad or moot?
A part of me thinks this is really hilarious, and simply a sign of the times. Of course the words in this introductory dictionary are going to change, people are changing. The nature of communication is changing.
I have this absurd, and maybe a little shocking, image in my head where I’m writing a blog post while on a cell phone and heating up a burrito in the microwave. Then I’m suddenly thrown into the wilderness with tones of edible plants around me. I look around for a while. I then sit down on a rock and begin to air type as I starve to death.
With this image in mind, this changing of words strikes me as a little sad. I wouldn’t call myself an outdoors-y person, but the times I have been camping, hiking and walking in less urban areas I have been struck with awe.
The simplicity of nature. The order within chaos. The vibrant colors. The lack of advertisements and garbage. Nature holds something inexplicable that can’t be captured by Web 2.0 (or, new to my lexicon, even Web 3.0).
However, all of this may be moot.
Who uses dictionaries any more?
I was once very proud of how quickly I could look things up in the dictionary. But now, if someone asks me what something means. I am perhaps more proud that I barely have to move to answer the question in a fraction of the time.
Couldn’t be simpler.
What do you think about this move in language away from nature towards technology?
Good, bad, inevitable?
Subscribe via RSS
{ 0 comments… add one now }