Five longreads on artificial intelligence and a future filled with machine-written prose.
language
Posted inEditor's Pick
Typos, Tricks and Misprints
“Why is English spelling so weird and unpredictable? Don’t blame the mix of languages; look to quirks of timing and technology.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Strange Persistence of First Languages
“Spurred by my father’s death, I returned to the Czech Republic hoping to reconnect to him. In doing so, I also reconnected with my native tongue, and with parts of my identity that I had long ignored.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Meet the Mystery Woman Who Mastered IBM’s 5,400-Character Chinese Typewriter
“Lois Lew operated the improbable, ill-fated machine with aplomb in presentations from Manhattan to Shanghai. 70-plus years later, she’s telling her story.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
We Need to Translate More Armenian Literature
“We need them to assert our very existence.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Code That Controls Your Money
COBOL, an old coding language that not many people know about, controls the world’s financial systems.
Posted inEditor's Pick
He, She, One, They, Ho, Hus, Hum, Ita
Amia Srinivasan on language and pronouns: “Language is a public system of meaning. No individual can unilaterally decide what a word means, or whether any given word, according to standard usage, truly describes them. And yet the definitions of words – as any lexicographer will tell you – depend on patterns of actual human usage, […]
Posted inHighlight, Nonfiction, Quote Posts, Quotes, Science & Nature
The Adaptation of Language Evolution
Language has always changed, but the introduction of technology means it is adapting in ways we have never experienced before.
Posted inNonfiction
Dispatch from Puerto Nowhere
Robert Lopez examines what it means to be an assimilated American from Puerto Rico, and what was gained and lost in the process.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
Keeping My Promise to Popo
As Anne Liu Kellor says goodbye to her Chinese grandmother in the hospital, she taps into buried memories and family trauma.