TECHNOLOGY AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

The two things that struck me most about Glenn Reynolds’ An Army of Davids are the childish quality of his arguments and the poverty of his prose. Just as one doesn’t need to be Aristotle to grasp the epistemological weakness of Reynolds’ intellectual reasoning (see my review in The Weekly Standard), so one doesn’t need to be George Orwell to appreciate the amateur quality of his writing style.

Reynolds writes like a typical blogger. Which is to say that he uses -- or rather abuses -- the English language shamelessly. Here, for example, is Reynolds on what it is to be human: “Being human is hard, and people have wanted to be better for well, as long has there have been people.”

Being human is hard….. The philosophy here is Nietzsche-For-Idiots. But the prose is even worse. These are the words of someone who writes before he thinks. These words are pretentious. And they are mostly meaningless.

Or here is Reynolds bringing his informal blogging language to the moral imperative for humans to colonize Mars: “Like a chick that has grown too big for its egg, we must emerge or die. I prefer the former.”

Did Reynolds think before writing this linguistic gibberish? Or do these metaphors just “emerge” from him after they have grown “too big” for his brain?

In his essay, “Politics and the English language,” George Orwell wrote: “A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

Orwell wrote this in 1946, more than half a century before Reynolds’ slovenly language and foolish thoughts were cobbled together into An Army of Davids. Orwell’s remarks are prescient. Foolish thoughts and slovenly language have always been bound up with each other. The Internet merely provides a convenient way for amateur writers to show them both off to the world.

In "Politics and the English Language", Orwell lists four categories of grammatical incorrectness.

1. Dying Metaphors
2. Operators or Verbal False Limbs
3. Pretentious Diction
4. Meaningless Words

Reynolds is a master in all four Orwellian categories. But he excels, truly excels, in meaningless words. Perhaps this is because he is a law professor. Or perhaps it is because he has spent too much time talking with other Olympic champions of meaningless words, like Ray “Singularity” Kurweil, who is heavily quoted in An Army of Davids.

In his section on meaningless words in “Politics and the English Language”, George Orwell wrote: “The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies something not desirable.”

Today’s meaningless equivalent of the word Fascism is the word Luddite. In a section entitled “We are all Supermen Now”, Reynolds introduces a word he calls “transhumanism.” – a word so devoid of meaning that it might have been coined by  another of George Orwell’s great legacies -- his Ministry of Truth from Ninety Eighty-Four.

Reynolds tells us that the pro-transhumanist community expects to encounter considerable opposition from “Luddites” like Bill McKibben and Francis Fukuyama. In Reynolds’ corrupt lexicon, anyone who doesn’t agree with his extremist views about technology is a Luddite. Since nobody in their right mind could agree with Reynolds’ messianic faith in the “transhumanist” qualities of technology, that makes any sane person into a Luddite.

So this is where Reynolds and Kurweil and their techno-utopianism has led us. Either we are pro-transhumanists or we are Luddites. Such are the consequences of foolish thoughts and slovenly language. Such is the impact of contemporary technology utopianism upon the English language.

Comments

[Russell Seitz]

There is much merit in your characterizaton of this book's prose style and ideas, but your failure to single out Mr. Reynolds' elision of a smoke-free Borders with an Addisonian coffeehouse or the haunts of Hume and Smith makes one fear the visible hand of nicotine deprivation weighs heavily upon The Weekly Standard.

[Karl K]

Andrew, I have discovered your site recently, and I find what you say to be a useful corrective to the breathless optimism of the technological utopians.

Still, there's an important difference between someone like Rousseau and, say, a Ray Kurzweil or even a Glenn Reynolds.

Rousseau's vision was pure fantasy. In contrast, in the worlds of nanotechnology, robotics, and genetics that Kurzweil chronicles, or in the blogosphere that Reynolds champions, REAL stuff is happening. Some of it will be helpful. Some of it will be extraordinary. Some, I daresay, will be quite troubling.

But a newer world, a real one, is coming. Will that newer world conform to the "singular" conceptions of Kurzweil and Reynolds? Unlikely.

Will it be as baleful as your charmingly curmudgeon sensibility suggests? Equally unlikely, methinks.

[Razib]

I agree with your view. However, it is true that many people think that easy language means "bad or weak language".

[Friendly Fire]

ok. So Reynolds doesn't have a core philosophy behind his book. But what is yours? Where exactly are you coming from here?

[Lavaman]

I agree in part, but like previous post wonder about your philosophy. Where are you coming from? Do you believe that we are inherently bad?

[Rob White]

Hey, Andrew, your ideas are pretty cool. I really admire you for taking on the might of the technology sector. Here in Portland, they are everywhere. You are right. It's not possible to question technology without being called a Luddite. So what word should we use for those of us who question the social and cultural impact of all these technologies?

[Duhbya Doolittle]

Orwells writing style was simple, if you DONT see the loop of Polity and Money then your BLIND!!

[mr ho]

first off Orwell was really Blair.
and served in the Brit Imperial Army.
Now secondly he was a Martinist society member.

What Blair(orwell) wrote of in the Animal Farm is the oldest form of rule;
Order from Chaos [social to empirical rule, then repeat]

[Kelli]

what is a Martinist soc member?

[Glenn Lover]

I think Keen is a Martinist. That's someone who drinks martinis and thinks they are George Orwell (or Blair or whatever his damn name is)

god preserve us from this Anglo snobs who think they know everything. Given me an army of Andrew Keens for a single Glenn Reynolds

[The clinker]

hear hear

or clink clink

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Really resonate with your conclusion that sometimes the debate is prematurely ended by the black and white transhumanists vs luddite characterization. I disagree with tehnologists' and futurists' Kurzweilian utopia, but I haven't been called a luddite (helps to have a BSEE). It's easier to change views from within and with reserve sometimes.

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

You do sound like a Luddite, Andrew....

[Paul Lamb]

Folks: You might enjoy this peice..."Web 2.0 makes us young again", today in Computerworld:
http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/story/0,10801,110435,00.html