Posted on 01/21/2004 1:43:01 PM PST by fishtank
Certainly. Those that love language for the sake of language will have more time and resources to study what they love. Even after language translation is perfect, I still want to be able to sing my french drinking songs in my imperfect french.
I may be expert at knowledge base systems, unix system admin, and moving processes from paper to virtual, but I don't love and study that as I do food. I've read Larousse's Gastronomique from cover to cover, in the hardbound version, with notes on the side. Food is my calling, and I can only study deeply food with access to internet sites on chemistry, polymer production, psychology of smell, and so many other sources of information.
The available information doesn't make it easier, but harder. Should I use aluminum for filo pastry flower dessert forms? Does that affect intake of aluminum that may relate to Alheimers? What stainless steel can I use to make the forms? I'm not a metalurgist, so I google for hobbiest metal supply online and find out what is cost effective. I also learn about stirling engines, if that catches my interest.
/john
Most people do not learn language from the love of doing so but from necessity. There will be no great impetus for augmented humans to do this when they already have a device inside their heads that can translate any language on Earth precisely and instantaneously.
Those things happen now. Pilots are taught to trust their instruments, and JFK Jr probably would be alive if he had. The future is today.
I guess that my point is that the tool of the connections in the internet allow the average person to expand his horizons much further that he would be able to without it. That has been my experience.
This has been one of the more stimulating conversations on epistimology that I have had in a long time. Thank you for your views. They certainly made me review mine.
/john
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