Device Register Revisited
As I’ve mentioned before, talking to our devices can be tricky. That’s a relatively recent development; an older problem is how our devices talk to us. Siri and Alexa actually sound normal enough to not be jarring—if they correctly interpret our request—and I would expect that to continue to steadily improve.
But there’s still a need for getting printed communication right, and it seems there will “always” need to be a human to look closely at text rendered on the screen to help. A classic example for those of us of a certain age is the dreaded “syntax error” message of early computer systems. Frustrating and opaque, there is almost no information contained therein: the programmer may as well have left off the word “syntax” and just had the single word “error” displayed instead. It might have been less infuriating.
I spotted a somewhat more amusing example at a grocery store recently. At the self-checkout, the display admonished me to “Come on, Scan and Bag it!” This could be taken two different ways. One would be as enthusiastic encouragement to participate in the grocery shopping process; to get into the spirit of commerce and joyfully ring up those eggs, asparagus and bell peppers and get them into a bag so I can go home and make a frittata! Oh, boy!
But another reading might feel like you’ve been transported to a busier, perhaps slightly grittier grocery store, where even the machines are in a hurry. One might feel like the message to “Come on, Scan and Bag it!” could easily be followed by “I don’t have all day!” or “There’s other people in line, pal!”
The difference, of course, is tone, which isn’t something that our devices have a lot of flexibility with yet when they are speaking. (That will be an entirely different and possibly much more amusing chapter in voice assistant development.) But it’s also something that requires much more care any time that text is displayed that you might ordinarily simply say out loud. At a time that everyone is forming text messages exactly the same way they would speak, the mistaken assumption is that you know how I sound in my head just by the words I’m typing. Perhaps that’s why we lean on emoji to ensure the other person knows what we mean. ;)
Rough Translations
Foreign films have the challenge of being understood in more than one language. Subtitles are problematic gateways to these films because 1) translation is just plain tricky, and 2) they are, of course, written—they’re not quite speech from another language. I won’t dwell too much on the first point, but suffice it to say that translation isn’t just matching up words from one language to another. Languages say things differently—sometimes much differently—than others.
The ears are working overtime to attempt to understand what’s being said—or how it’s being said—whether we want them to or not. You can hear the actors’ inflections and tone, but you can’t count on really understanding the shades of meaning they convey because culturally and linguistically they don’t always match up with what we expect. Luckily, context helps and we can watch the actor’s behavior, too. Maybe that’s part of why we sometimes gesture when we speak. Gestures may have been our first language and now they’ve become a supplement. Or maybe gestures are a side effect of speaking?…
The eyes are working overtime to take in the whole scene, going back and forth between the action and the subtitles. Luckily, the average adult can read around 250 words per minute and the recommended talking speed for comprehension is about 150 words per minute, so there’s usually enough time to keep up with the subtitles. (A different, but fascinating phenomena is that human languages all cluster around nearly the same rate of spoken information per minute: other languages just sound a lot faster.)
During the film festival that just wrapped up we watched a comedy about a couple who did voiceovers of films when they lived in Russia, before they emigrated to Israel. The film is in both Hebrew and Russian, but the subtitles gave no indication which language was being used, so it was sometimes hard to tell when something was funny because the couple wasn’t fluent in Hebrew or if it was just funny. There was an Australian film that I wish we had subtitles for because it was often hard to understand the dialog. In fact, we’ll often turn subtitles on for British and Australian films and TV shows—just so we don’t miss any words or phrases that we aren’t familiar with. (And, to be honest, sometimes we even turn subtitles on for American films…)
Tangentially, it’s interesting to note that Shakespeare’s plays are deceptively challenging for modern English speakers because they are in a distinctly different dialect, if not quite a different language. The biggest problem being that the meanings of many words have drifted since then: the way that real people use certain words in everyday life have changed so much that we fool ourselves a little into believing we understand Shakespeare’s characters, even when we don’t quite. Word-for-word subtitles would not solve this problem nearly as well as a modern translation.
But even reading the text of my native language being spoken isn’t the same as listening to it being spoken. And reading the subtitles while listening to the actor’s rhythm and intonation and trying to re-assemble them in real time is work—and not always satisfying. It just doesn’t land the same way that spoken language does.
But all of the complexities and difficulties aside, subtitles are still enormously powerful. They give us a way to understand stories and ideas we might not otherwise have access to. They can entice us to pay a little more attention, tricking us into more carefully considering things we think we recognize. They emphasize a perennial question of life as well as film: what is going on in this scene?
Final Drafts
The first draft can be anything; sometimes it’s anything but what the final draft wants to be.
Thinking and revising and reading out loud and editing transform the first draft into something else—hopefully closer to what the final draft wants to be. The subtractive part of the editing process is hard to get used to: throwing away the parts that don’t make sense, that don’t fit, that don’t support.
But what’s left afterward isn’t just smoother, cleaner and tighter; it’s layered. There’s the core or the seed that was planted or discovered, the found and the fabricated bits that fit just so, and the gentle rearrangements over time that anneal them into something solid.
Final drafts contain previous drafts. Every final draft is a palimpsest.
Layers of Information
Written language has been an efficient way to take in information for hundreds of years. The act of writing is even more rich and involved than reading. The effort and mechanics of putting your thoughts on paper or screen help clarify what you’re thinking; they help you actually notice things about what you’ve written.
Writing is not a 2-dimensional phenomenon, even though it fits comfortably on the page. The instructions our brain sends to our hands create movements and forces that contain different information about the words we write than the text itself. Movement is information if we simply think of it that way. For writing and sketching this means that there is more going on than the visible strokes on the page: there is another layer of information, meaning and understanding that’s difficult to see because it’s in the movements that created them: the speed and forces and friction and resistance.
DNA is information encoded in proteins: instructions for making us much (but not all) of what we are. And movement—whether it’s walking, jumping rope or swimming—makes changes to our bodies: loosening up stiff joints, building muscle, increasing endurance. Our bodies experience these changes because of the information contained in gravity, load and leverage as we move.
There is deep work going on inside us when we move; layers of information in action. Encoded deep in the genetically determined structures of our muscles and bones and lymph nodes are the instructions for decoding the information contained in movements and forces and stresses. Our bodies read the reports of our movements at the same time that they author them: instructions for strength and health, encoded in motion.
Reading Out Loud
If you read your own writing out loud, you might hear words and phrases that don’t belong. You can then rewrite it to sound more natural—more like you. The funny thing is that it’s not the version of you that usually does the talking. It’s still you, but clearer for having first discussed it with yourself.
If you repeat this process over and over, you might catch yourself saying very interesting things; things that you never could have said unless you had first heard them from another version of you, reading your writing out loud.
Open Invitations
Moving the pen across paper—just doodling—or typing a few words is an invitation to sketch or write. A little light stretching or walking is an invitation to exercise. Cutting up one raw fruit or vegetable is an invitation to cook.
Small, easy movements are polite, warm gestures to even more engaging activities.
Touch Play
We’ve been watching The Queen’s Gambit and it’s reminded me of the “touch move” rule: if you touch a piece you’re obligated to use your turn to move it. It discourages a lot of fiddling around with the pieces, trying out moves before committing to one. The game is perhaps more elegant and disciplined as a result.
What I think is most interesting is the effect that even just touching a piece can have. A player might have visualized—incompletely or inaccurately—a set of consequences and side-effects, but the act of simply reaching and grasping a piece can lead to a sudden realization of how the intended move actually impacts the rest of the board. And how the game could play out differently as a result.
Writing feels like this over and over again. I certainly don’t see the words on the page before I write them. I might hear some of them in my head, but it’s not the same as seeing and feeling them play out onto the page or bubble up onto the screen. Often, even if I have a particular outcome in mind, it simply changes as I write it. Sometimes I’m surprised at what ends up on the page after a “move”.
I’m not sure that chess and writing actually have that much in common. But both require touch in order to discover the outcome and the entire game can change after the first move.
Menus
A menu isn’t just a list of things you can get at a restaurant. The menu can be thought of as a highly favorable review; at once both comprehensive and succinct. It’s also a chance to tell the story of the restaurant, to give it a sense of time and place as well as taste.
Even before we set foot inside, the menu can tell us what to expect and why.
Text/Texture
I love books. I am excited by new discoveries, ideas, knowledge. I like learning.
I love the feel of books, too: their weight, the flexing and yielding of paperbacks and the stately solidity of a hardcover. The heft of a stack of books feels like treasure. I was cleaning up broken glass very early one morning and was struck with wonder at how it is that we can feel with our fingertips a single shard of glass—really just a grain of sand—so small that we can scarcely see it. And our sensitive fingertips and alert brains, as Kurt Vonnegut remarked, tell us that books are good for us. I love the feel of the pages of a book: not the glossy, plasticky kind, but the slightly rough, porous kind. The kind that inspires awe when you look closely and consider the typographical outposts imposed on that fibrous terrain.
And you can see on the page and in your mind the weaving of a good story, description or explanation. And in seeing it so clearly, you can almost feel the warp and woof of good writing like the texture of a warm blanket.
“Blocks” of Writing, Moving and Eating
“I don’t feel like exercising” is the movement equivalent of writer’s block.
Caveat: if your exercise of choice is something stupid or you absolutely hate it, please choose a different exercise/activity. Just sayin’: you will never see me at a spin class.
If you started moving just a little bit—y’know, put on some athlesiure wear and walk over to the thing where you do your thing—it wouldn’t feel awful. You’d be OK. If you then did your exercise of choice slowly, even half-assed, it wouldn’t be a big deal and it probably wouldn’t feel awful. (Note that at this point, you have already won) If you kept at it for 5 minutes or so, you might even start to get into it. (Again: winning) From here on out, it’s simply a matter of degree: on a scale of 1 to Captain America, how do you feel? Some workouts just don’t feel that great. Most are, by de!nition, average. You get a couple here and there that make you feel like a tiger. It’s all on a continuum.
The Russians have a saying, “Appetite comes with eating.” They’re on to something: they’re called appetizers. An eating warm-up, as it were...
Three Keys
Breath is life: breathing is the most important movement we have some control over.
Movement—mindless movement, movement that requires attention, concentration and effort, big or small, gentle or vigorous—helps the mind to see things more clearly. Mostly by taking our minds off of whatever our minds are doing and letting our body mind us.
Writing refines thinking.
Breathe, move, write, repeat.
Efficient Exercises
The deadlift is a powerful activity because nearly every muscle in your body is exercised in order to move the weight off of the floor until you’re standing straight up—especially when the weight gets heavy.
Making soup (most cooking, really) is a powerful activity because all 5 of your senses are exercised: touch as you chop vegetables and stir the pot, taste (obviously), smell (also, duh...), sight (does it look like there are enough carrots? Have they turned that really bright orange yet?) and sound (how hot is the pan?).
Writing is a powerful activity because it exercises your creativity, judgement, style, vocabulary, sense of structure and it encourages clarity.
I think part of what makes these activities interesting is how much of us is engaged in them simultaneously.
On the Similarities Between Cooking and Writing
It is best to taste and re-season often.
Advance preparation can make the activity more pleasurable.
Recipes are a beginning, but deeper satisfaction can be found within experimentation.
Sipping whiskey (in moderation) or coffee (to excess) whilst engaged can elevate the experience.
There can be happy accidents, as well as the drudgery of throwing away effort and beginning again.
You may not wish to begin very late at night.
Fine, luxurious tools are a pleasure, but not necessary.
If the disorder becomes too great, you may wish to spend a few minutes tidying up.
Bacon.
It can be delightful to engage in it alone, but oftentimes the result is even more enjoyable when shared with friends.