u r 15, w3

Congratulations, World Wide Web! You’re 15! On April 30, 1993, CERN presented you to the world, no strings attached.

You’ve had quite an impact on us already, with fortunes made and lost betting on what you’ll do next. I’ve been helping to feed you, first from 1997 to 2006 in the production line at Arkansas Online, the Web site of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and now in dribs and drabs as part of the blog community.

You’ve made quite a difference in all our lives, mainly by changing our expectations. Used to be people heard about news on the radio, then waited for their newspaper to get details. Then, people saw news on television and waited for their newspaper to get background and perhaps broader interpretation. With you, they hear, see and read everything almost instantaneously. But I’m afraid you may have taken something from us. People say you have flattened the world, by which we mean you have leveled the playing field so that anyone, even with limited resources, can now participate in a global community of communication. But as you grow older, I worry you have flattened the world in the sense that you make us forget that the world is round. So many of us talk baby talk with you; so many of us try to be heard at once; so many of us talk as fast as we can without stopping to think. We have lost our subtlety and our patience.

You give us a way to talk to each other all the time: Most sites give readers a way to comment on any item. It turns out an awful lot of us don’t really want to share conversation; we want to win it. So many of us apparently have felt shut out and kept silent for so long that we think it’s our right to shout as loudly and spitefully as we can. You have taken away the manners we have when face to face with each other. You have connected us all but left us remote so that we can be as rude as our frustration lets us. Anyone we disagree with must be ignorant or evil and we don’t mind a bit telling them so, with you as our intermediary.

You give us a vast library of knowledge, but mostly we go to the children’s section where we can find the stories we like and don’t have to worry that the ideas will be too complex to understand in a few minutes. A lot of us think scientists are conspiring to kill God and journalists are conspiring to give the other side (whichever that is from ours) power and referees are conspiring to cheat our team. You have brought us together in our stupidity, like a lynch mob out to hang anybody. And when I say “anybody,” I don’t mean Tiger Woods or “anybody black,” because “lynching” never had any racial content for me. I learned the word from westerns, where angry fools wanted to hang a suspect as a horse thief or murderer without taking any time to consider or even gather any evidence. These days, with your help, we have a lynch mob for people who say “lynching.”

I hope as you grow older you will get better at this mediation and save us from our foolishness. Today, we look at what you allow us to do and presume that puts us at the center of the universe. But as we continue to examine the treasure-house of information you offer us, we will find like Copernicus that the center is elsewhere or like Einstein that anywhere can be the center. We will see that we are drops in the ocean, fully part of the whole but more similar than different from all the others.

Remind us, as often as it takes, that whatsoever is done to the least of us, or when the bell tolls for one of us, it happens to all of us. Convince us that it is not better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven. Help us to meet the enemy in this uncivil war of words and see that “enemy” is a misnomer: He is us.

And someday, on your 21st birthday or your 50th or 100th, I will thank you for centering us.

Thoughts and words, indeed

Words are wonderful. They lift us above the clouds and drag us from the depths of our despair. But what are words? How do we decide, how do we know, what they mean? Do they mean for others what they mean to us? Words can make us soar or sink, but don’t our thoughts go beyond our words?

A delightful use of words in the examination of these questions is The Stuff of Thought, a book by psychologist Steven Pinker, who studies cognition and linguistics. The book examines how we form, use and think about words. It illuminates the difference between our thoughts and our words, and between our perceptions and our discussions of those perceptions.

The book is by turns poetic and technical, musical and clinical. It is sometimes coarse but often subtle, with words used as scalpels and bludgeons. If you love words, you will love this book.

The Stuff of Thought explores how words have come to be as we have evolved to meet our world. It shows how our language expresses our inherent understanding of space, time and relationships, and how it allows us to rise above the holes in that understanding. Pinker takes us through experiments, some in the lab and some in thought, that show the limited built-in understanding of number (indications are we recognize mainly “one,” “two” and “more,” while all the rest may be counted as products of culture — our capacity to learn and remember) and how our language is shaped and informed by primitive, intrinsic notions of force, motion and position.

Reading on, we learn our brains are biological computers stringing together digital information into layers of meaning that enable us to come to grips with an analog world. We compile digital notions (up or down, left or right, front or back, good or bad, abcd…, 1234…, acting upon or acted upon, moving or stationary) into a valid narrative of flowing reality. This is a flexible tale that gives us balance between the real and the imaginary. We can swat a horsefly even though we don’t see a horse fly, if you know what I mean.

Pinker demonstrates how humor often hangs in the balance of such ambiguities that can distinguish an irritating insect from a levitating equine. He playfully demonstrates, too, that these ambiguities go beyond the tiny symbolic gap that creates a gulf of meaning between “horsefly” and “horse fly.” We are comfortable with a reality of clear edges and distinct borders, where it is easy to tell inside from outside or black from white, but our gray matter also works the middle ground.

We work the middle not just in shifting from “here” to “hear” but in shifting from servant to master in the tone we use when talking to our boss or the grocery clerk. The point of communication is sharing ideas, but it does not always arise from shared goals. We have contracts or treaties that are exercises in compromise by opposing forces, each seeking dominance. We have advertisements that accentuate the positive or spin the negative. We have euphemisms that allow us to talk about our maiden aunt’s new dress or haircut without hurting her feelings.

But the middle ground is quicksand, and this is where we so often fail to reach each other. If our styles differ, if our assessments of dominance or position differ, we are caught in muck. If you think your spouse or boss (does “or” signify a choice or an equivalence?) doesn’t understand you, this book will help you see how we may be wired to talk at cross purposes.

Suzy and I certainly have different styles. We have similar storehouses of knowledge and tend to come to the same conclusions, with some whopping exceptions. I have developed an ear for Suzy’s style because we share a common understanding of her intent. She returns the favor, adjusting her response to account for my style.

I tend almost always either to silence or to extensive equivocation. I think I talk too little or way too much and rarely am forceful in correcting someone or taking up opposition. I let people slide, even when I am quite certain they are wrong, no matter whether the issue is trivial or significant. This bottling up of communication leads to an outpouring of words and frustration once uncorked, and my message may be lost as listeners are overwhelmed by the emotional baggage or bored to numbness by the runaway verbiage. Suzy has an amplified sensitivity to my quiet utterings and the strength to deflect the heat or stifle the yawn from my ravings. Our cooperation has taken years of practice, so it’s easy to see how momentary judgments of status, intent or context undermine communication and keep people apart.

This may seem apparent and even trivial when it comes to spousal spats, but it is at the core of much bigger deals. Pinker notes the litigation on the insurance question of whether the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001, was one “event” or two, with $3.5 billion in payments at issue. Of course, a vastly larger issue that hinges on world view underpins how we see the day: Were the hijackers crazed terrorists or new Davids battling a new Goliath at the behest of their loving God?

The bite is worse than the bark when this dog chases its tail: Our perception of the world colors our words, which shape our world. Pinker cites a Middle East peace treaty that was signed only when “territories” was left unmodified, so that one side could interpret the reference as meaning “all territories” while the other could take it to mean “some territories.” The words stopped the worst of the war, but the war of words continues, as does a somewhat lessened battle on the field.

We must watch our words and accept the uneasy peace in the gray areas so that we may survive to talk again another day. Our wonderful words can be terrible, too. They may not always be good, but if we think about it we make them good enough.

Once a writer

Time was when writing came easier. These days, it seems, I am a bit rusty.

Like the Tin Woodman struggling to swing his axe, I find my thoughts resist smooth flow. I strain to find my voice, but the creak of clumsy words cuts me short. I have been away from the grindstone for too long and the razor sharpness is gone. I tap out sentences, but get back only a dull, thudding echo of the thoughts behind them.

Time was when I was a young and vibrant writer, a “Tin Wordman” perhaps, who could polish off a piece in no time. I needed only a topic and time for reflection. It didn’t even need to be quiet time; I could chip away at an idea in the back of my head as I went about the business of the day. When it came time to write, I would cut straight and true to the heart of the matter.

I was in those days a practiced craftsman, with a method to my madness. I knew that I wrote best when committed to my subject, so I reviewed each day with a keen eye for raw material. Always thinking ahead to my next essay, I looked back on each day for the little moments that struck a nerve, or the funny bone. Those little moments were all stories waiting to be told, lessons waiting to be taught, passions waiting to be shared. The stories would tell themselves, if I would just find them.

But it has been long since I was a paid tradesman charged to produce such pieces, and I have fallen out of the habit of crafting for my own pleasure. In the intervening decades as an editor, I have occasionally prepared a lecture, written a guide or compiled a research thesis, but mainly I have been writing headlines and polishing someone else’s prose. Writing has become a collection of brief, disconnected exercises in clarifying someone else’s thoughts. The careful review of each day with an eye toward a thoughtful revelation shared with dear reader has fallen by the way.

So I find myself puttering in the shop, working on pieces in starts and stops, trying to regain the delicate touch. Oh, the stories are there, still waiting to be told. In my months of disability, I have had time thrust upon me. That time has been filled with thoughts of hospital stays, insurance bureaucracy, banal television commercials, the undeserved love and support of friends. I made a list of catch phrases waiting to be expanded and expounded upon.

When some of them could wait no more, they brought me to Brulog. But my unpracticed hand finds me hitting snags with my catch phrases, and my carving takes unproductive turns. Part of me is more timid, fearful that the sharp edge will slice the wrong target; part of me is more rigid, not looking so hard for the newness in things; part of me is more gray, unable to resolve to black and white.

Still, it’s been only a few weeks and I suspect the touch will return. Come along with me and let us find the edge together.

Constrained, or “What can I say?”

Where do I begin? I don’t mean that in the usual casual sense of “How shall I start?” I mean it in the existential sense of “What are the boundaries of me?”

Yes, dear

My wife, Suzy, is a good egg. She deserves more love and praise than a mere man like me can give, but perhaps I can tell you a little about how she saves me.