We take written language for granted. But it's actually the most important human invention, when you really think about it. Nothing else comes close.
Discussion
Remove written language from the equation, and reduce us just to oral language, and our entire technological civilization basically just vanishes.
Writing is the enabling technology of civilization, but not only that. Written language as all cognitive tools shapes our consciousness.
“Very few people would ever fall in love if they never read about it.”
Why aren't we spending more to optimizing it?
I mean we certainly have and it evolves on its own.... but such a fundamental component deserves more directed attention. Also fascinating is the role that emojis have played recently, as a form of written language. They transcend spoken languages unlike alphabets, yet their meaning is far less precise.
I think language has evolved and become more optimized over time, actually.
I agree for sure. It's just that it's happened in a highly distributed uncoordinated way (which is absolutely amazing in and of itself) and I wonder if some concerted effort could yield faster/better optimizations.
I'm not sure. My completely limited sense is that it could be pretty difficult to make drastic changes to entrenched language, given that cognition and language is very linked, and as Chomsky and others have argued, our brains have an intrinsic linguistic grammar that is common to all known human language. That said, I have only very recently started reading a little bit about linguistics and neurolonguistics, so I a barley know what I'm talking about here.
*neurolinguistics.
Like this? 😉
asynchronous time transient information transfer 🤪
The right written language (Latin) was also essential for the printing press to be successful, which lead to the increase in literacy.
except invention of spoken language
We may not have invented it. There's quite a bit of evidence that language might be intrinsic to the human brain. Outside of his politics, the study of this is one of the things that Noam Chomsky is well-known for in the field of linguistics.
This intrinsic nature is also believed to be why babies are able to pick up language so fast through osmosis.
Absolutely! As swaths of people reduce their capacity for reading and writing, I wonder if it is part of what has further divided humans. Reading and writing are the best asynchronous ways to challenge your own thoughts.
Was math invented or discovered