Take twenty minutes, and you'll walk away feeling so much smarter.

I'd not heard of Tex-Mex as a linguistic phenom but it hardly surprises me.

In one lecture, Lerer talks about the origin of 'Pidgin English' which I presume is very much the same thing -- a 'new' language created by amalgamation and, I figure, necessity. Could probably argue that's how all languages are born.

Also, yes. I had to amend some stuff in my own writing after this tedx talk. Particularly the differences between a scroll and a book. The relevance...coincidence perhaps?...surprised me: I have a character covertly reading scrolls at one point, trying to gain knowledge that he shouldn't. Made sense when I wrote it, but the fact that we cannot 'skim' scrolls, cannot 'bookmark' them is something I'd just not considered from a practical stance.

Adding this detail to that passage definitely enriched it -- instead of just scanning the scroll, the character is now consciously aware that he cannot glean the information in a fashion he desires. Instead, it's piecemeal and fragmented. This works completely in my favour for what I'm doing.

I'd pondered what would happen if books were outlawed. Far from the first writer to do that, of course. But what this video makes clear is that even if you outlaw books, they'll still exist, because the need to reference information, to be able to access it quickly and non-sequentially rather than 'beginning to end' will always drive someone to go from 'scroll' to 'codex' to 'book'.

The computer screen and the e-reader are nowhere near as guaranteed. They're just technological simulators (simulacra, as Lerer put it) of the same. What I think he could have explored more (given time) is the effect this shift away from the book to the net/e-reading has had on the way people engage critically with information and knowledge. This move from 'absorption' to 'theatrics' may have resulted in a significant drop in our ability to engage with a work without distraction, without interruption.

...I mean, did you really read all this without once doing something else?

I really wasn't trying to brag. My point was that the plan for a college course I took, which was not prepared by me but by a professor, happened to include pretty much all of those things. In a single class.

Now do you get what I'm trying to say?

And yeah. Codices.

"

.I mean, did you really read all this without once doing something else?

Actually I did, and not just your post but the entire thread. Then I watched the video. I liked it. Not sure if it increased my smarts. I do very much appreciate being able to put my finger in a book and hold my place.