C’est plutôt dommage. Certaines personnes semblent encore croire qu’il
y a des bonnes et des mauvaises façons de parler. Qu’une langue peut
être d’une certaine qualité. Évidemment, la bonne langue, c’est la
sienne propre. La langue mal parlée, c’est celle des autres.
Classique! C’est quoi ça? Du «glossocentrisme» par parallèle à
l’ethnocentrisme (prendre sa culture comme mieux que celle des autres)?

Pourtant, il est maintenant rare que les gens aient des propos aussi
désobligeants à l’égard de la culture de l’autre. Pas que les gens ne
se croient pas bien supérieurs aux autres. Mais sans doute à cause de
la rectitude politique, les gens ne diront pas que la culture
écossaise est bien mieux que la culture slovaque. Quoique…

Les gens condamnent des pratiques (culturelles ou linguistiques), en
bloc, sans penser aux ramifications. Leur propre perspective est
suffisante, ils ont tout compris. Peu importe les raisons qu’ils
utilisent, s’ils sont opiniâtres, c’est qu’ils sont au-dessus de tout
et de tous.

La critique, c’est bien, mais faut voir ce que ça cible. Cibler un
discours spécifique, en dénoncer la nature fallacieuse, c’est la
moindre des choses que nous puissions faire. Condamner un groupe de
façon péremptoire parce qu’il s’exprime ou se comporte différemment de
nous, c’est peut-être rassurant, mais c’est absurde et ça a des
conséquences néfastes dans la communication entre individus de
différents groupes. C’est encourager l’intolérance.

Oh, on ne parle pas de caricature. Une caricature efficace provient
d’une compréhension profonde de certains comportements. Biaisée, bien
sûr, mais profonde. Jouer sur les stéréotypes peut même aider à
déconstruire ces stéréotypes. Mais énoncer des généralisations sur un
groupe humain sans se rendre compte que ce ne sont que des
stéréotypes, c’est une façon de renforcer des opinions trop rapides,
des préconceptions.

Pour revenir au langage. La façon la plus facile de décrire la
situation est de parler de perspectives «descriptive» et
«prescriptive» sur la langue. La description linguistique, c’est ce
que les spécialistes en sciences du langage font. Ils décrivent les
caractéristiques spécifiques de diverses langues et diverses variétés
de langues. Cette description est basée sur une compréhension du
langage humain comme mode de communication.

Le mode «prescriptif», c’est le «disez pas ‘disez‘, disez ‘dites‘» (citation réelle). Ça fonctionne très bien dans un contexte spécifique, ce que démontre la citation. En contexte plus formel, la variante «disez» est inappropriée de la même
façon que le mot «néanmoins» est inapproprié dans une discussion
informelle, du moins dans certaines communautés linguistiques.
L’optique prescriptive sert généralement à renforcer les formes
appropriées en contexte formel, les contextes informels disposant de
leurs propres mécanismes de régulation.

Pour certains, il s’agit d’une distinction entre l’oral et l’écrit
mais certaines formes orales (déclaration solenelle, poésie…) sont
plus formelles que beaucoup de formes écrites et certaines formes
écrites (messagerie directe sur le ‘Net) sont plus informelles que
beaucoup de formes orales.

Bien sûr, le degré de formalité n’est qu’une dimension parmi d’autres.
Le type de langage utilisé par des brasseurs entre eux n’est pas plus
ou moins informels que celui utilisé par deux chirurgiennes entre
elles. Les deux sont valables en contexte. Mais ce sont des variétés
très différentes.

Les locuteurs, surtout francophones, sont conditionnés (si!) par la
notion de «niveau» de langue, qui sont généralement placés dans une
hiérarchie et souvent considérés comme complètement distincts les uns
des autres. Pourtant, le «niveau» scientifique est-il plus ou moins
élevé que le «niveau» littéraire? Et n’y a-t-il pas de pont entre ces
deux «niveaux» dans diverses productions langagières?

Ce sont des principes de base, très simples. Certains de ceux qui
gueulent contre la langue des autres et qui croient «bien parler»
auraient avantage à les comprendre avant d’imposer leur vision du
langage aux autres. Ils se comportent parfois comme quelqu’un qui
parlerait d’équipement informatique en parlant de la qualité des
«bits» que tel ordinateur peut transférer. L’analogie se poursuit même
un peu plus puisque les mots du langage humain, comme les «mots» en
informatique, servent à la transmission d’information et dépendent
tous deux d’encodage et de décodage. D’ailleurs, l’informatique a
largement été influencée par la linguistique. Et vice-versa.

Quoi qu’il en soit, l’idée c’est que les unités linguistiques (tout
comme les «bits») n’ont aucune valeur absolue. Les gens peuvent leur
assigner des valeurs (j’ai le droit de trouver 10010101 plus beau que
11000111) mais la référence d’une unité dépend d’un contexte
spécifique («il y a 10 types de gens: ceux qui comprennent le binaire
et ceux qui ne le comprennent pas»).

Marina Yaguello a publié un livre très facile d’accès qui peut aider
les gens à comprendre ce genre de question: Catalogue des idées
reçues sur la langue. Il est disponible à la FNAC et
sur Amazon.fr
mais semble épuisé chez Renaud-Bray et sur Amazon.com.

To follow on naive ideas about economy…

I tend to pick on the recording industry and others. In my mind, the
RIAA and other big organizations are just too greedy. Not that smaller
organizations are devoid of greed, but smaller organizations have more
reasonable aims and less of an impact. There’s been a lot of “mergers
and acquisitions” in a number of industries (including those I care
most about: music, publishing, beer, computers). International
conglomerates and other merged entities aren’t inherently evil. But
they’re quite dangerous. Many of them are just not doing their job.

I do care about the fact that corporations are pretty lousy at
“listening to what people want.” Creating needs can be an effective
way to achieve short-sighted goals but it’s not a way to help society
as a whole.

One ad for Salon Premium describes the impact of media convergence as
“everybody thinking the same way.” The message is interesting but
Salon doesn’t seem to move in the opposite direction which would be to
allow free (as in speech) movement of information, “readers” being
allowed to compose their own image of reality based on different feeds
(yes, I’m thinking about RSS/Atom as an interesting alternative). On
the ‘Net, it matters fairly little if a “piece” comes from from the
NYT, AFP, or a corporate press release. Those publications have ceased
to be guarantees of “trustworthy information.” The concept of
information itself is slowly transforming, in the minds of several
people. Not necessarily that it’s closer to Shannon and Weaver’s
model, with associated notions of entropy, but not everyone thinks of
“bits of information” as being valuable on their own.

People are now able to look at different pieces of information,
eventually trusting themselves in the final analysis, to contribute to
a broad understanding of the world. They understand that knowledge
isn’t just accumulated information. And they exercise critical
thinking. Yes, there’s such a thing beyond the buzzword. Hopefully,
journalists, marketers, financiers, and politicians will give
<bold>people</bold> (Actual Human Beings) more ways to exercise this
type of thinking.

It might just be an extension of the relationship between Gutenberg
and Reformation: devotees are now allowed to read the texts and don’t
depend on a higher authority to determine the “value of information”
presented to them.

Does this all make sense? In my head it does. At least, the little
voice says that it all makes sense… 😉

The Onion | Scientology Losing Ground To New Fictionology
As is often the case with The Onion (“America’s Finest News Source”), this piece is an insightful take at a social trend. The basic idea is that of a “mythical belief system free from the cumbersome scientific method.” The target is Scientology, but the idea is far-reaching.
Interestingly enough, when I was describing the difference between science and belief systems (the only “belief” shared by scientists is that the scientific method can provide appropriate results), a student asked about Scientology which, unlike science, is in fact a belief system. One could include “Intelligent Design” as a similar system: based on beliefs but adopting some aspects of the scientific method. Lamarck, Buffon, and others have proposed similar ideas, with or without a base in belief. In fact, even Descartes’s Discours de la méthode attempts to prove beliefs using a scientific method. At least, that’s what I remember (I was 13 or 14 at the time I read it, for fun).

Macworld: Editors’ Notes: iPods killed the radio star
Some comments on the influence the iPod (and other music devices) have on radio programming.
The overall history of music broadcasting is pretty interesting and recent music devices certainly have their role to play in the current changes. Who knows, maybe the old “payola” system will soon be a thing of the past?
There’s a few deeper issues, I think. One is that the notion of shuffled playlists isn’t itself very new, as it was done on CD players and was especially powerful with CD changers. But the large number of tracks which can fit in the playlist of one of the recent devices makes the shuffle mode much more impressive on those devices than on CD changers. Not to mention that one usually selects specific tracks for a playlist as opposed to CDs which might include different tracks that we don’t really want to hear. So, in a way, the main change isn’t so much with the shuffle mode but with large selective playlists/libraries.
There’s something more, though. A radio station’s strength, according to some, is that professional DJs choose the tracks to broadcast. At least, that’s the impression they’re trying to give. In fact, Microsoft recently had a campaign touting music devices on which you can listen to FM radio because you can “Let a professional make your next playlist.” Now, whether or not people want FM radio on their music device is another issue, but touting it as “a key feature” on devices which are meant to hold the listener’s favourite tracks seems a bit clueless. Ah, well…
Still. The status of a good radio DJ is clearly changing. Some people may still love them, trust them, cherish them, worship them but other people have traded those professional human DJs with their own playlists.
There are other issues with today’s radio, as mentioned in this tongue-in-cheek piece about the Microsoft campain. Much of it is filled with ads, has way too commercial music, and may be outright annoying.
Personally, I almost never listen to any radio station unless there’s something specifically interesting. I did participate in a couple of radio shows but I tend to prefer being “proactive” with the music I listen to (or with the news I read). Call it foolish pride, but I don’t necessarily like to be told what I should listen to. “Push” technologies are an interesting concept when you can actually select what you want to be pushed to you. And it shouldn’t be pushed down your throat…
In the end, I wonder what role radio broadcasting will play in the future.
One thing that can be neat is a customized broadcast à la “podcast.” Eventually, it could be done in real time, wirelessly, from one music device to the next. Like jack sharing. If the recording industry were to see the light (yeah, right), this could be transformed into a viable mean of distribution with compensation to artists. As it stands, the radio doesn’t really help artists yet it’s backed and pushed by the recording industry. Since radio is sooo, like, you know, 20th Century, maybe musicians should invest more in other methods of broadcast and distribution…

Still thinking about this review of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Such an in-depth review would be a rare sight in a typical magazine, for many reasons. To make things even more impressive, Mac OS X 10.4 was released only a few days ago. It could take months for the typical magazine to release such a report. And the magazine itself would cost at least $5 and include many irrelevant articles.
As we all know, part of the power of the ‘Net (and the Web specifically, in this case) is to enable different types of publishing. It’s neither new nor surprising. But it’s still impressive.
In this case, Ars Technica uses Google ads as well as paid subscriptions, which carry some advantages (such as a PDF version of an article in 21 parts!). Again, neither new nor surprising. But if it works (and it seems like AT is doing well enough), it’s a better model than the model used by some publications which annoy their readers with constant reminders that they should subscribe or watch ads, or can only access content for a limited amount of time…
On the ‘Net, simple economic models may work. Not that they necessarily will. But what’s needed wasn’t the tulipbulb.com “e-commerce” model. Just a principle of targeted added-value. Dead simple. Everybody knows it. But some people are still fighting an old war with older weapons.
A similar situation with music. Apparently (should verify this at one point), the whole worldwide recording industry is worth a mere 30 billion USD. Nothing to sneeze at, of course, but incredibly small as compared to so many other industries, including advertising. There was something about ringtones becoming a 3 billion USD industry. It probably didn’t happen but that would have meant 10% of the recording industry. There’s something incredibly absurd about this, especially given the fact that ringtones are probably bought online and can probably use MP3s. In many ways, a ringtone is much less than the equivalent file on a CD yet it may be bought even if the CD is available. Doesn’t this seem strange to anyone else?

Yes, I know exactly how naive this all sounds…

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
A very elaborate review of the latest version of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. Some geeky details, a bit opinionated at times, but always thoughtful and not that hard to read.

Four Singing Horses / Quatre chevaux chantant
Click on each horse.
Cliquez sur chaque cheval.

LinkedIn

Recently, a friend from Switzerland invited me to join his LinkedIn network. I joined in but didn’t add any contact. Another friend, graduating MBA from the University of Notre-Dame, was talking about LinkedIn with fellow MBA graduates and I decided to flesh out my network a bit. Not that I might benefit directly from this type of contact but I like to put people in touch and the very concept of a social network is quite important for me.

Un ami m’a invité dernièrement et je me suis inscrit. Plus tard, un autre ami en parlait lors d’une discussion avec des collègues d’université. J’ai donc pensé agrandir mon cercle de connaissance. Pas que j’aie vraiment besoin de ce type de contact mais j’aime bien mettre les gens en contact et le principe de réseau social est assez important pour moi.

Wired News: The New Old Journalism

Because whether we’re talking today or 10 years ago, it’s not the medium, it’s the reporter.

And if “we’re talking 10 years from now,” it won’t be the reporter either.
Penenberg’s other Wired “Media Hack” contributions have tended to be much more insightful. So either he’s getting defensive (“we’re still relevant as we teach journalism students to write the same way as we did 10 years ago”) or he was a bit lazy in his critical thinking. No, not the buzzword. The actual reflection.
I’m sure Penenberg and others see the implications of people’s appreciation for the convenience of skipping “reporters” to get critically at the writing itself, whether the author has been trained at NYU’s journalism department or did a dissertation in molecular biology in Madrid.
It’s this thing with journalists: they tend to think that they’re better than people at processing information. So instead of helping people use their own variety of perspectives, they delude themselves in the notion that they’re the closest thing to “objectivity” that the world can get. Not to mention the fact that they think “objectivity” is an absolute value, in and of itself (they probably never appreciated a tasty old cheese!). Well, the other problem (that we see in blogs, including my own blogging activities) is that people focus on “releasing early” instead of seeing the broad picture. No, it’s not about “depth.” It’s about taking a step back. Very few things are extremely time-sensitive and none of them is covered particularly well by journalists.
Hey, it’s not their fault. They’re trained like that. So I wouldn’t ever blame journalists. But I think journalism is more of a problem than a solution.
Once in a while, I get the impression that there’s hope and that journalists will finally see the light. But then, even the most “enlightened” act reactively.

Ah, well…

Wired News: How Much for a Dozen Human Eggs?
How about research outside of the US? Any insight from elsewhere?
In fact, hasn’t there been an exodus of sorts among stem cell researchers who flew from the US for similar reasons?