essays and ideas from Eliza Sarobhasa
Microsoft wants you to teach computers how to learn
As clever as learning computers may be, they only have as much potential as their software. What if you don’t have the know-how to program one of these smart systems yourself? That’s where Microsoft Research thinks it can help: it’s developing a machine teaching tool that will let most anyone show computers how to learn. So long as you’re knowledgeable about your field, you’d just have to plug in the right parameters.
via We Don’t Need More Designers Who Can Code
What we should be saying is that we need more designers who know about code.
The reason designers should know about code, is the same reason developers should know about design. Not to become designers, but to empathize with them. To be able to speak their language, and to understand design considerations and thought processes. To know just enough to be dangerous, as they say.
This is the sort of thing that breaks down silos, opens up conversations and leads to great work. But the key is that it also does not impede the ability of people to become true experts in their area of focus.
When someone says they want “designers who can code”, what I hear them saying is that they want a Swiss Army knife. The screwdriver, scissors, knife, toothpick and saw. The problem is that a Swiss Army knife doesn’t do anything particularly well. You aren’t going to see a carpenter driving screws with that little nub of a screwdriver, or a seamstress using those tiny scissors to cut fabric. The Swiss Army knife has tools that work on the most basic level, but they would never be considered replacements for the real thing. Worse still, because it tries to do so much, it’s not even that great at being a knife.
Professionals need specialized tools. Likewise, professional teams need specialized team members.
You might not consider hackers to be a tribe apart, but I guarantee you that many — if not most — hackers themselves do. Eric S. Raymond’s “A Brief History of Hackerdom,” whose first draft dates to 1992, contains a litany of descriptions that speak to this:
They wore white socks and polyester shirts and ties and thick glasses and coded in machine language and assembler and FORTRAN and half a dozen ancient languages now forgotten .…
The mainstream of hackerdom, (dis)organized around the Internet and by now largely identified with the Unix technical culture, didn’t care about the commercial services. These hackers wanted better tools and more Internet ….
[I]nstead of remaining in isolated small groups each developing their own ephemeral local cultures, they discovered (or re-invented) themselves as a networked tribe.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled to bits that every day the power to translate pure thought into actions that ripple across the world merely by the virtue of being phrased correctly draws nearer and nearer to the hands of every person alive. I’m even more delighted that every day more and more people, some very similar to me and others very different, join the chorus of Those Who Speak With Machines.
But I fear for my people, the “weird nerds,” and I think I have good reason to. Brain-computer interfaces are coming, and what will happen to the weird nerds when we can no longer disguise our weirdness with silence?
The way I thought you used a dictionary was that you looked up words you’ve never heard of, or whose sense you’re unsure of. You would never look up an ordinary word — like example, or sport, or magic — because all you’ll learn is what it means, and that you already know.
…
The New Oxford American dictionary, by the way, is not like singularly bad. Google’s dictionary, the modern Merriam-Webster, the dictionary at dictionary.com: they’re all like this. They’re all a chore to read. There’s no play, no delight in the language. The definitions are these desiccated little husks of technocratic meaningese, as if a word were no more than its coordinates in semantic space.
John McPhee — one the great American writers of nonfiction, almost peerless as a prose stylist — once wrote an essay for the New Yorker about his process called “Draft #4.” He explains that for him, draft #4 is the draft after the painstaking labor of creation is done, when all that’s left is to punch up the language, to replace shopworn words and phrases with stuff that sings.
The way you do it, he says, is “you draw a box not only around any word that does not seem quite right but also around words that fulfill their assignment but seem to present an opportunity.” You go looking for le mot juste.
But where?
“Your destination is the dictionary,” he writes:
Suppose you sense an opportunity beyond the word “intention.” You read the dictionary’s thesaurian list of synonyms: “intention, intent, purpose, design, aim, end, object, objective, goal.” But the dictionary doesn’t let it go at that. It goes on to tell you the differences all the way down the line — how each listed word differs from all the others. Some dictionaries keep themselves trim by just listing synonyms and not going on to make distinctions. You want the first kind, in which you are not just getting a list of words; you are being told the differences in their hues, as if you were looking at the stripes in an awning, each of a subtly different green.
via You’re probably using the wrong dictionary « the jsomers.net blog.
Here’s The Thing About English.
As Blaze Miskulin puts it below, “English is a mutt. And a slut. It was born of the random fucking of multiple cultures, languages, and dialects, and it will hop in bed with any language that tickles its fancy. It’a also a thief. English will blatantly steal any word or phrase that it finds interesting. We like it? Fuck it, it’s English, now.”
I made a minor statement in another post, and I got a reply that struck me as rather odd—both in its content and its somewhat aggressive tone.
I made the comment that English isn’t easy for foreigners to learn, and gave an example of phrasal verbs to illustrate my point. The response was… odd.
So, I thought I would share my experience and insight on EFL (English as a Foreign Language) with the O-Deck at large.
The thing that most native English speakers don’t understand is that English isn’t a single language in the way that French, German, and Chinese are. Each of those have a very long history and a high degree of isolation (German maybe less than the others, but still significant).
In the course of my teaching, I often have the opportunity to explain the basic history of English. This is usually prompted by a situation where I have to explain that “well… this word is actually French, and that word is Latin, and we often use them in combination with this other word that comes from German…”
The simplest way I can explain it is that English is the bastard child of a bastard child. There are linguistic historians out there who can explain the details far better than I could ever hope to, but it boils down to this: English is a mutt. And a slut. It was born of the random fucking of multiple cultures, languages, and dialects, and it will hop in bed with any language that tickles its fancy.
It’a also a theif. English will blatantly steal any word or phrase that it finds interesting. We like it? Fuck it, it’s English, now.
I express this in rude terms (something English is excelent for, by the way), but I want to stress that this is one of the things I absolutely *love* about English. And I believe that this is one of the most significant reasons that it has become the lingua franca for the world. French used to be the universal language. But the French became too wrapped up in preserving the “purity” of their language. The world doesn’t want a “pure” language; it wants a slut that accepts any and all comers.
For about 25 years before coming to China, my work and play revolved around English. I was a competitive speaker, a performer, a speech and drama coach, a published author, a copywriter, an editor, and more. I had a mastery of the English language. And then I came to China and started teaching it to people for whom it was not their mother tongue. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was brought down a few pegs. I was suddenly confronted with people for whom the very basis of the language was utterly alien. Culture guides language, language guides culture and thought.
For example: In which direction does time move?
Ask anyone who speaks a European language, and they will say “Forward, (of course!)”. Things are “ahead of you” or “behind you”. You “move forward” or “go back”. You “look ahead” and “look back”. We have “foresight” and “hindsight”.
In Chinese, time moves down. In Chinese, “next week” is “down one week” (xia ge xing qi —下个星期). Tomorrow, however, is “bright day” (ming tian—明天).
Chinese language “thinks” in a very different way from English—and most European languages.
One of the most frustrating things I have to deal with is “the dictionary”. In a recent Forbes article, Amelia Friedman recounted this typical interaction with undergraduates:
We don’t need to be bilingual because we already have the skills we need in the global marketplace.
We know how to use Google Translate
, we’ve traveled abroad in college, and we watch Anderson Cooper at least twice per week.
[emphasis added]
The most common thing I say in my classes is “Put down the dictionary!” I don’t care how advanced you think your “universal translator” is… it’s wrong. I can’t count the number of times I’ve had someone thrust their phone in my face, open to the dictionary app, saying “But the dictionary says…” only for me to respond: “The dictionary is wrong. If you say that in America (England, Australia, Anywhere), nobody will understand you.”
N.B. Sometimes it’s “amazo-fucking wrong”.
One of the areas where communication breaks down is phrasal verbs
Phrasal verbs ( as I noted in my previous post) are real and integral parts of the English language. They are also one example of how English is a difficult language to truly learn.
In the thread that spawned this post, the commenter referred to phrasal verbs as “crazy colloquialisms”. This is a serious misunderstanding of the English language (and, frankly, language in general)
A phrasal verb is when multiple words (a phrase) combine to mean something different from the meanings of the individual words. English isn’t unique in this, but it’s still a factor that makes English difficult to understand.
Phrasal verbs are not something that is “outside” common speech. They are inherent English phrases which use words in ways which do not fall within the expected parameters. They are, quite frankly, the way we speak.
No matter where you go in the world, you will turn in reports, look up information, ask outpretty women, call in sick, turn down invitations, and run out of beer (Goddammit! Who drank all the beer?!)
Idioms: It’s a love-hate relationship. I absolutely love idioms. Not as much as I love colloquialisms (look down yonder), but they make me as happy as a pig in shit.
On the other hand… teaching them as EFL is… well… problematic (to put it politely). While some idioms can be explained, the vast majority of them are simply “common cultural knowledge”. I will say, with authority and conviction: “This phrase means X. I don’t know why, don’t bother asking”.
This is, of course, true of any language. The first time someone said “ma ma hu hu” to me, I had no clue what they were saying. Then a “helpful” (read: snarky asshole) co-worker translated for me. It means… “horse horse tiger tiger”. Ummm…. what?? “Just so-so”. Not a single person I have asked (all native speakers) has been able to explain to me why “horse horse tiger tiger” means “Just so-so”. It’s just an idiom.
Colloquialisms are, I think, the best part of English. I loves me some local sayings.
For those who don’t know, a colloquialism is a “colorful saying”. They are frequently regional or local. Unlike slang (see down yonder), colloquialisms have a long lifespan—as evidenced by the fact that they are commonly preceded by the phrase “As my grandpa used to say…”
While colloquialisms can nestle into any grammatical corner, the most common (and most fun) fall into the range of metaphors and similes.
“He’s as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.”
Or…
“You’re trying to fit ten pounds of shit into a five-pound bag” (recently proven impossible by Mythbusters).
The one I remember from my dad was “She’s five-foot tall and three axe-handles wide” (she’s short and fat).
Because they are regional or local, even native speakers won’t always understand colloquialisms. I ran into that somewhat frequently when I was living in Texas and Virginia (I’m a Wisconsin boy). But then… they often didn’t understand what I was saying.
Between native speakers, colloquialisms are either easy to figure out (there’s enough shared culture) or easily identified as colloquialisms—at which point we just say “What the fuck does that mean?”
Foreigners, however, frequently lack an inherent “feeling” for the language that lets them know that a set of words should not be taken literally. And they certainly don’t have the cultural and regional understanding to correctly interpret what’s being said.
Slang. Oh gods… slang. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.
Slang is the bane of anyone trying to teach EFL.
One of the core intents of slang is to make itself unintelligable to “old people” and “uncool people”. So… basically anyone who deals with language in an international context.
Slang has a half-life shorter than most transuranic elements.
I don’t teach slang. I will often refer to slang—but almost always to show how it causes breakdowns in communication, and shouldn’t be used.
My example: At a previous job (selling boats) I did a photoshoot. 3 models volunteered their time in exchange for copies of the photos (TFP; Time for Print (that’s jargon)). After weeding out the bad shots, I sent copies of the photos to the models. I also posted copies online. One of the models commented on a photo of hers with this: “That makes my legs look sick!”
I was taken aback. I thought the photo was quite good and showed her in a positive light. Why was she saying that it made her look ill or deformed? I e-mailed another one of the models and asked her what I had done wrong. She replied: “Sick means really good”.
That’s when I knew I was officially “old”.
Nothing has advanced my understanding of English more than spending 3 years teaching it to Chinese students.
You think you know English? Okay… Find a non-European who is just learning English and try to explain these words to them:
Now…
Explain the difference between “a”[uh] and “a”[ay].
“I have [uh] pencil.”
“I have [ay] pencil.”
One of the things I stress to my students is that language is not words; language is ideas. I loves me some colloquialisms, but I will get down-right violent about the complete wrongness of using “literally” to mean “figuratively”. It’s not about the words, it’s about the ideas.
Language isn’t about rules or definitions any of the shit the textbooks insist is ultra-important. Langauge is about communicating. There are a bazillion tools out there to teach people vocabulary and grammar and all that other textbook stuff.
Those tools will tell you that “The vodka is good, but the meat is rotten“
English is like the game of Go: An hour to learn, a lifetime to master.
English is a very forgiving language. For daily interaction, we really don’t give a rat’s ass about details. Can I understand what you mean? Great!
When you step into anything more complex than buying a slurpee or taking a taxi to the beach, however, it’s a whole different ballgame.
via How to Understand Your Computer – The New Yorker.
Early on in the book, Chandra makes a very interesting claim: many programmers and I.T. professionals have no real idea how computers work, either. Because they don’t need to, essentially; they need to make them perform specific tasks, but they don’t need to understand how they perform them.
He quotes a plaintive post by a programmer named Rob P. on the Q. & A. site stackexchange.com. Rob begins by saying that he is almost embarrassed to reveal what he’s about to reveal, given that he has a degree in computer science and has worked full time as a developer for five years. “But I Don’t Know How Computers Work!” he says. “I know there are components … the power supply, the motherboard, ram, CPU, etc … and I get the ‘general idea’ of what they do. But I really don’t understand how you go from a line of code like Console.Readline() in .NET (or Java or C++) and have it actually do stuff.”
Chandra goes on to provide a fairly thorough explanation of how computers work—of the things that are physically caused to happen by these coded commands, the “mediating dialect between human and machine.” He devotes an entire chapter early in the book to the language of logic that is the native tongue of computer processors; this is the torrent of binary numbers, of ones and zeros, that constitutes the universal grammar of machines. Chandra even goes so far as to include diagrams, as well as photographs of functioning logic gates constructed from Legos.