Thread: The devaluation of the English (or American) language

The topic degraded somewhat from quality of the english
language to science fiction literature, but anyway...

Smilies are used to symbolize emotions you would see if
you would talk to someone. I can use sarcasm, but only
some symbol will prevent my communication partner from
thinking I lost it. S/he can't see my wicked smile that goes
with the remark.
I might not be a prime candidate for talking about the
english language. It's not my native language. I use it
to communicate, and I like to use it, but I will never be
as proficient as with my native language, being it use of
words, vocabulary or sentence structures.
What I really hate to see are those abbreviations. There
is a time for short syllables. If you don't have space
( i.e. SMS ) it's ok. But... y r u talking 2 me like z ?
It makes no sense. It costs me time to decipher it. Time
I could use for other things. It just means the writer is
too lazy or too cool. I don't like lazy people, I don't like
people who are trying to be cool.


Sci-Fi:
Starship Troopers R.A. Heinlein.
If you know the movie, forget everything you saw.
The book is more philosophical. Not so much action.

"...shines the name, shines the name of Roger Young..."

Netforce T. Clancy
In the not-so-far future there is another agency, Netforce,
commited to capturing computer criminals. While VR is
everyday life, Agents are hunting spies and terrorists.
While the stories are Clancy-Standard, the outlook of
the future is quite real. This is a scenario that might take
place in 10 years.

Originally posted by [stealth]


Look outside the box every once in a while rick and you might learn more than what you expected.

The novel doesn't really explore too much into what I was talking about, but the Directors cut of Bladerunner undeniably questions what it means to be human. The film also casts doubt upon the fact that the bounty hunter (Ford) is human, hinting that he could be an android.

My point is: is a clone a human, or just a clone? Is an android programmed in every way to be human, a human?

Sounds like a rare case of the movie's being better that the book.

rick barclay

Originally posted by zen


To do jobs unfit for humans(slaves). Clones could still be classed as humans, therefore it would probably be considered morally wrong to treat clones differently than any other human whereas it may be considered acceptable to use androids for any purpose. Whether this is acceptable and how different androids would be from humans is a major theme in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?/Bladerunner (it's even in the title).

Yeah. Okay. Those androids in the book escaped from some
planet where they were doing dirty work, weren't they?
Interesting. The androids were almost indistiguishable from
homo sapiens, too. Some of them were crafty and lethal. I saw
my copy of the book lying around someplace, but now I can't
find it. Shoot. The old lady might have thrown it out. She loves
tidying up my stuff that way, dang her. But anyway, a lot of times
I don't pay close attention when I read something, especially
when I'm predisposed against it as in the case of most of the
stuff we classify as science fiction.

You could also say that androids would do jobs unfit for any
living thing (which you did say, didn't you) , such as guard dogs, bomb sniffing dogs, etc, etc, etc. I think the problem I have
with androids, the book, is simply the lack of character
development. I think I would have liked it better if Mr. Dick
had taken more time to write a lot more about his players,
especially the fugitive androids.

rick barclay

Yes Heinlen is great. So is Ray Bradbury, Asimov. The "Hugo Awards" Anthology is great source of well-written sci-fi novelettes, too.

I think Farenheit 451 is a true classic.

A Clockwork Orange is great but the one initially released in America is different from the U.K. version! The Americans didn't like the happy ending, and so the end of the book saw the editors chopping block. Also, only to further stigmatize the book here in the U.S., the Glossary of Nadsat words was absent, so in effect it was comprable to reading Sci-Fi "Jabberwocky" till the U.K. version reached American soil much later!

I haven't picked up a sci-fi book in years.

The English language is hard to describe but too be sure it has elements of degradation and also elements of refinement. Speed tends to affect communication a lot these days. Everyone is in such a hurry, n so typng lik this is ! raer. It days gone by, notice how slowly everyone was able to speak- just look at how slow and methodical older generations carry on? Now it is not uncommon to be squeezed into a "Power Meeting" with the boss where you must time your response in coordination with his cell phone answering, pager scrolling, and wrist-watch glaring, etc...
But no matter. We have a choice about how to speak to eachother, and the precedences we set may someday contribute to both the good and bad modes of speech...