We are losing our common vocabulary, built over thousands of years to help and delight and instruct us, for the sake of what we take to be the new technology's virtues.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the loss of our shared language and knowledge due to the rise of new technologies.
Alberto Manguel's quote reflects a concern that as new technologies evolve, they come at the cost of losing our rich and historical common vocabulary, which has served to connect, enlighten, and bring joy to humanity over centuries. This shift may prioritize the perceived benefits of modern technology while undermining the depth and richness of our traditional ways of communication and understanding.
In practice
In a speech about the impact of digital communication, one could use this quote to emphasize the importance of preserving language.
The stories that unfold in the space of a writer's study, the objects chosen to watch over a desk, the books selected to sit on the shelves, all weave a web of echoes and reflections of meanings and affections, that lend a visitor the illusion that something of the owner of this space lives on between these walls, even if the owner is no more.
From fire, water, the passage of time, neglectful readers, and the hand of the censor, each of my books has escaped to tell me its story.
One book calls to another unexpectedly, creating alliances across different cultures and centuries.
It has always been my experience that, whatever groupings I choose for my books, the space in which I plan to lodge them necessarily reshapes my choice and, more important, in no time proves too small for them and forces me to change my arrangement. In a library, no empty shelf remains empty for long. Like Nature, libraries abhor a vacuum, and the problem of space is inherent in the very nature of any collection of books.
My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.
A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.
We want to galvanize people's imaginations. With enough political will and investment, we could make wheelchairs obsolete.
Facebook succeeded because it was about real people having a presence on the Internet. There were all these other social networking sites people had, but they were all about fictional people.
I believe AI and its benefits have no borders. Whether a breakthrough occurs in Silicon Valley, Beijing, or anywhere else, it has the potential to make everyone's life better for the entire world.
The Internet's abundance - of information, goods, tastes and sources of authority - creates unparalleled opportunities for individuals to get exactly what they want. But this plenitude threatens political and cultural authorities who believe in telling individuals what they can have rather than letting them choose for themselves.
Apps or media who make money on advertising are never satisfied with 'enough' of your attention. They will always fight for more.
Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material.
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