The written word part 5

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1. Tags

   Summary

   More than a decade post war and Hermione Granger is little more than a memory. No one has seen or heard from her since the funerals; her friends and loved ones hope she is alive somewhere but have given up on ever seeing the brunette witch again. But Fleur Delacour has a secret; once a year she receives a letter from an unknown sender that makes her feel more alive than she does at any other point in the year. Half a world away Hermione, no longer the bookish know-it-all that anyone from Britain would recognize, finds herself in a chain reaction of events that puts her on a collision course back to Britain and everyone she left behind.

   Series

   • Part 1 of Relationship Road

   Language:

   English

   Words:

   121,445

   Chapters:

   21/21

   Kudos:

   2890

   Bookmarks:

   431

   Hits:

   71161

TOEFL Success Read the passage to review the vocabulary you have learned. Answer the questions that follow.

Johannes Gutenberg’s ingenious use of movable type in his printing press had a wide range of effects on European societies. Most obviously, readers no longer had to decipher odd handwriting, with ambiguous lettering, in order to read a written work. Gutenberg gave each letter standard forms, a move that had connotations far beyond the printing business. The inscriptions on tombstones and roadside mileposts, for example, could now be standardized. The cost of books decreased. Even illiterate people benefited indirectly from the advent of this invention, as the general level of information in society increased. However, Gutenberg’s press was of limited use for languages that used picture-like symbols for writing instead of a phonetic system. Systems of symbolic pictographs, each of which denotes a word, require many thousands of characters to be cast into lead type by the printer. Phonetic systems, like the Latin alphabet, use the same few characters, recombined in thousands of ways to make different words.

Bonus Structure — Most obviously introduces an easyto-see effect and implies that lessclear effects will come later.

                                    
                                          
This is a song I had to write for my music class as an assessment and I thought it would be awesome to share with you guys. I had to choose a theme that I could be inspired by and of course my one true passion is Musical Theatre, so I chose that! Here it is, I hope you like it!
                          
Intro:
                          
What happens when a play begins?
                          
What happens on the journey?
                          
I'll tell you if you sit and listen
                          
to my story the story of this night.
                          
Verse:
                          
I hold the new script



  


                       
  




                          
I read every line
                          
The journey begins
                          
What's in store this time?
                          
Rehearsals begin

                          
I meet all the cast
                          
Friendships begin to grow
                          
                          
CHORUS:
                          
Let me tell you my story



  


                       
  




                          
Sing with all my might
                          
And share in the magic
                          
                          
Let me take you on a journey
                          
Come and see the sights
                          
Come and share all the magic
                          
                          
Verse:
                          
I watch them rehearse
                          
All working so hard



  


                       
  




                          
We show off our scenes
                          
                          
Glimpses of greatness
                          
Begin to appear
                          
Characters are found
                          
                          
                          
Verse:
                          
Costumes are fitted
                          
Sets are constructed
                          
The rehearsals get longer
                          
                          
The songs are all learned



  


                       
  




                          
The lines are remembered
                          
The show's in two weeks
                          
                          
                          
Verse:
                          
We get to the Theater
                          
I'm on the blank stage
                          
Excitement is building
                          
                          
Backstage is chaos
                          
People everywhere
                          
The tickets are sold
                          
                          
                          
Verse:



  


                       
  




                          
I wait in the dark
                          
I wait for my cue
                          
Just a curtain between
                          
                          
The orchestra plays
                          
The lights come on
                          
The curtain opens
                          
                          
                          
The journey had ended
                          
Everything's gone
                          
Now it's time to wait
                          
For a new play to come along



  


                       
  




                                  

Ted Chiang’s recent release of his latest work in two years seemed like a good incentive to add two or three extra posts to the already finished Ted Chiang Series. It’s also a chance to comment about a short story written by Ted that I did not mention before: 72 Letters.

The common theme in both stories is the idea of words as a tool endowed with power. In The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling (TFTF), the power is the ability to gain personal insights, while in 72 Letters, the power is the ability to influence the external world. This dual view of words as tools of personal and external change is highly reminiscent of the idea of practical magic and spiritual magic discussed in the “Ted Chiang: Science, Language and Magic” interview.

The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling

Forgive and forget.

In one of the storylines, somewhere in the future, a journalist is tasked with the review of Remem, a software that brings up specific videos on (oral) request. To put things into context, lifelogging has been popular for a long while so people have hundreds of Gigabytes of video about their personal lives stored in their computers or in the cloud. The use of Remem becomes equivalent to the act of remembering; the only difference being that Remem is 100% accurate while our memories are not reliable, as psychology research has shown. What are the implications of using Remem? This is what the anonymous journalist asks himself. The use of lifelogging records in the justice system has proved its usefulness. But what about its use in relationships? He thinks that the use of empirical evidence to prove oneself right might be a source of conflict in couples.

———————

“Joel is always saying that he knew it all along,” said Deirdre, “even when he didn’t. It used to drive me crazy, because I couldn’t get him to admit he used to believe something else. Now I can. For example, recently we were talking about the McKittridge kidnapping case.”

She sent me the video of one argument she had with Joel. My retinal projector displayed footage of a cocktail party; it’s from Deirdre’s point of view, and Joel is telling a number of people, “It was pretty clear that he was guilty from the day he was arrested.”

Deirdre’s voice: “You didn’t always think that. For months you argued that he was innocent.”

Joel shakes his head. “No, you’re misremembering. I said that even people who are obviously guilty deserve a fair trial.”

“That’s not what you said. You said he was being railroaded.”

“You’re thinking of someone else; that wasn’t me.”

“No, it was you. Look.” A separate video window opened up, an excerpt of her lifelog that she looked up and broadcast to the people they’ve been talking with. Within the nested video, Joel and Deirdre are sitting in a café, and Joel is saying, “He’s a scapegoat. The police needed to reassure the public, so they arrested a convenient suspect. Now he’s done for.” Deidre replies, “You don’t think there’s any chance of him being acquitted?” and Joel answers, “Not unless he can afford a high-powered defense team, and I’ll bet you he can’t. People in his position will never get a fair trial.”

I closed both windows, and Deirdre said, “Without Remem, I’d never be able to convince him that he changed his position. Now I have proof.”

“Fine, you were right that time,” said Joel. “But you didn’t have to do that in front of our friends.”

“You correct me in front of our friends all the time. You’re telling me I can’t do the same?”

———————

Still on the topic of relationships, the journalist also thinks that forgiveness depends on partially forgetting the action to be forgiven. In his opinion, Remem’s accurate algorithms will make forgetting impossible. Erica Meyers, a spokesperson from the company that developed Remem, replies to the journalist’s concerns.

———————

“If your marriage is solid, Remem isn’t going to hurt it. But if you’re the type of person who’s constantly trying to prove that you’re right and your spouse is wrong, then your marriage is going to be in trouble whether you use Remem or not.”

———————

The journalist talks about the influence of technology in episodic memory (memories about personal experiences) and semantic memory (factual knowledge). While the journalist agrees with placing our semantic memory in electronic devices, he feels uneasy about doing the same with episodic memories.

People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments.

The journalist worries that technology mediated episodic memories will imply losing a part of our uniqueness. With these mixed feelings, he decides to use Remem to find a video about an emotionally sensitive event that happened in his past. It turns out that his recollection of the event differs with the video Remem brings up. He is eventually forced to face the reality that he built a narrative based on a distorted memory and this has had damaging psychological consequences for his daughter. The journalist concludes that a narrative based on inaccurate memories might not be that good after all. Narratives will still be built, Remem will just ensure that they are not too far away from reality. The following quote signals the turning point of his attitude towards Remem:

And I think I’ve found the real benefit of digital memory. The point is not to prove you were right; the point is to admit you were wrong.

*

The second storyline follows Jijingi, a young member of a Nigerian tribe experiencing the arrival of the first Europeans. A Christian missionary called Moseby befriends Jijingi and teaches him the art of “making marks on paper” (writing).

The sounds a person made while speaking were as smooth and unbroken as the hide of a goat’s leg, but the words were like the bones underneath the meat, and the space between them was the joint where you’d cut if you wanted to separate it into pieces. By leaving spaces when he wrote, Moseby was making visible the bones in what he said.

Writing gives Jijingi the ability to think differently about language.

Jijingi realized that, if he thought hard about it, he was now able to identify the words when people spoke in an ordinary conversation. The sounds that came from a person’s mouth hadn’t changed, but he understood them differently; he was aware of the pieces from which the whole was made. He himself had been speaking in words all along. He just hadn’t known it until now.

When Reiss, the European anthropologist, arrives to the tribe, there is also a brief comparison between the sermon-preaching Moseby trying to get everyone to follow European cultural practices and the note-taking Reiss assuming an impartial stance while she learns more about the culture of the tribe.

Jijingi receives a copy of one of the stories of Kokwa, the storyteller, and becomes disappointed at realising that writing does not capture the non-verbal language used by the storyteller.

 …the sound of his voice, the movement of his hands, the light in his eyes. He told you the story with his whole body, and you understood it the same way. None of that was captured on paper; only the bare words could be written down.

He also finds out that Kokwa tends to change the words each time he tells a story. He confronts the storyteller about this and Kokwa makes him question whether or not being perfectly accurate is important when telling a story.

After one of his sermons, Jijingi and Moseby have a talk about the use of writing to refine one’s thoughts. He then realises that Kokwa and Moseby have different approaches when it comes to telling an event.

Even though Kokwa was telling the same story, he might arrange the words differently each time he told it; he was skilled enough as a storyteller that the arrangement of words didn’t matter. It was different for Moseby, who never acted anything out when he gave his sermons; for him, the words were what was important.

As Jijingi’s writing abilities expand so does his understanding of writing:

Writing was not just a way to record what someone said; it could help you decide what you would say before you said it. And words were not just the pieces of speaking; they were the pieces of thinking. When you wrote them down, you could grasp your thoughts like bricks in your hands and push them into different arrangements. Writing let you look at your thoughts in a way you couldn’t if you were just talking, and having seen them, you could improve them, make them stronger and more elaborate.

Another aspect of writing comes later on, when Jijingi is twenty. He finds that some boys were sent to an European missionary school and now that they are back, they use their ability to write for selfish purposes. It is worth noting that those boys were the ones the tribes wanted to get rid of and that no one else in the tribes, apart from Jijingi and those boys could read and write. This effectively gave them power over the rest of the tribe.

The Europeans often believe paper over people.

Jijingi tells Moseby that the word “true” has two words in their language. “Vough” is factual truth while “mimi” is that which is best for the involved people. The truth of fact and the truth of feeling are weighed equally. This difference plays a central role later on when a dispute threatens to split the tribes apart.

The assessment report of the Europeans was vough; it was exact and precise, but that wasn’t enough to settle the question. The choice of which clan to join with had to be right for the community; it had to be mimi. Only the elders could determine what was mimi; it was their responsibility to decide what was best for the Shangev clan.

The term “vough” is roughly equivalent to the idea of semantic memory, while “mimi” is equivalent to the idea of episodic memory. In the first story, the journalist struggles getting to grips with a technology that he feels will imply a change in the nature of his episodic memories. In the second story, Jijingi’s understanding of the written word with an implicit higher regard of facts over feelings conflicts with his native culture where matters of “mimi” or truths of feeling are not mediated by technology.

Writing is a technology, which means that a literate person is someone whose thought processes are technologically mediated.

This is the central topic of the story, the characters try to resist changes in their worlds that have as consequence the introduction of technology-mediated episodic memories. Given the nature of these memories, it feels like giving up something very personal. However, both characters come to terms with the new changes. The journalist has a talk with his daughter that opens his eyes to the truth of fact and Jijingi’s elders send members of their tribes to Christian schools where they learn to read and write. Jijingi’s jump from mimi to vough feels similar to the journalist’s shift from relying on organic memories to relying on technological retrieval of memories. They both get new insights: Jijingi, about the way his tribe  thinks and the journalist, about the errors he made in the past.

How much personal insight can I claim if I can’t trust my memory?

You’re probably thinking that, while your memory isn’t perfect, you’ve never engaged in revisionism of the magnitude I’m guilty of. But I was just as certain as you, and I was wrong. You may say, “I know I’m not perfect. I’ve made mistakes.” I am here to tell you that you have made more than you think, that some of the core assumptions on which your self-image is built are actually lies. Spend some time using Remem, and you’ll find out.

Asking Sabe to defer to the paper was asking him to act against what he considered right.

But the reason I now recommend Remem is not for the shameful reminders it provides of your past; it’s to avoid the need for those in the future. Organic memory was what enabled me to construct a whitewashed narrative of my parenting skills.