Tag: language

Rational Media

What qualifies as “rational media”?

For a term (or “string”) to be rational, that term must be defined. Undefined terms are considered irrational.

Whether terms or strings are defined or not of course depends on the corresponding linguistic community. Some terms and strings may even have definitions in several languages, sometimes a term’s definition in one language may be similar to or even the same in another language, other times they may be quite different from each other. Likewise, there may be differences from one dialect to other dialects. Some terms may be frequently used by one linguistic sub-community, and at the same time be used only rarely by others.

And perhaps the most important consideration of all is whether or not a term’s owner shows any sign of inauthenticity. A recent example of severely lacking authenticity was Elon Musk’s acquisition of “twitter.com”. After acquiring the domain (which is, in itself also very inauthentic — as “twitter” essentially means something like “babble”) he is attempting to rebrand it as something even more meaningless — namely “x” (see also “What’s X?” [ http://socio.business.blog/2023/10/28/whats-x ] ).

In the long run, idiosyncratic use of terms has very little impact on a community’s language. As in the case above, if a “dictator” were to declare a term to mean something which the corresponding linguistic community does not “follow” or “agree” with, then such an idiosyncratic definition will generally “fall on deaf ears” (or it will seem like a foreign language, which does not “belong to us“). Such foreign languages are considered “irrational”, insofar as they make little or no sense to the indigenous linguistic community. [1]

[1] For more about this phenomenon, see also “Propaganda Information Technology vs. Indigena Information Technology — the Basic Idea” [ https://indigenous.news.blog/2022/05/07/propaganda-information-technology-vs-indigena-information-technology-the-basic-idea ]

Introduction

Each top-level domain is made up of about 1 googol [1] domains (or “sites”). Since this number is so incredibly enormous, it seems ridiculous to consider any one site as particularly important.

Note, however, that not all sites are equally significant (or insignificant). There are a few basic factors to take into consideration.

First of all is the hardware technology used by the user. Over the past decade or so, most novice users have chosen to use mobile devices which are visually oriented and which also do not require a high degree of literacy. So-called “smartphones” or “tablets” are similar to slabs with pictures on them, much like hieroglyphics or stained-glass windows in churches. All the user has to do is use a finger to press logos or images to select the corresponding applications (or “apps”). The number of apps available to users is relatively limited. [2]

For more literate users, a full keyboard provides much more refined capabilities to launch particular applications. Users with adequate literacy skills can easily select so-called “web applications” by simply typing the site address into the appropriate space in a “browser” window.

How “broad” or “narrow” a site’s targeted audience is has a lot to do with the corresponding audience’s language skills. For a quick and easy overview , consider “Zipf’s Law”. Here, two aspects are particularly important :

  1. short names are generally preferable, as they are easier to type
  2. meaningful names are generally preferable, because these function as simple & easy ways to match supply and demand for particular kinds of information (such as “weather”, “health”, “medicine”, “sports”, “movies”, “romance”, “love” or whatever)

In sum, a “needle in a haystack” ought to be much easier to find than one out of a googol sites. People who give almost all of their attention to one individual site (or even just a few individual sites — such as “Google” or “Facebook”) are very narrow-minded (and probably simply lack literacy skills). Finally, the language chosen as interface between user and the universe of available information is the most crucial technology involved in the information retrieval (also known as “search”) process.

[1] I believe this number is commonly referred to as “a one followed by 100 zeroes” (in the “base ten” or “decimal” numbering system).
[2] For example, most image-based logos are relatively simple. Even if highly complex, humans could only distinguish relatively few distinct images — many dozens of orders of magnitude less than one googol.