Even in photos, words.
May I present, thought to have been nearing extinction, but proving surprisingly resilient––the humble written word. Today's take on writing: my love/hate relationship with spellcheck and what it represents.
I just spent a day doing a dance in Pages trying to lose the red line in “occasionally.” It finally disappeared, but not before I went through five or six attempts.
This red line dance is an intentional setting “spellcheck through red underline, but do not correct” and I think I’ve got aficionado, bureau, and Massachusetts down through the process. I can usually get restaurant right (don’t ask me why this previously befuddled me) and there is a word with a couple troublesome middle c’s and s’s (which I forget) that is seeing improvement.
There are some productive uses of technology and I embrace them when they help my flow. Forget that the latest version of Apple’s once-glorious Pages (09) lost 90 percent of its layout functionality, dumbed down for easy use on mobile device.*
Notes, the latest Apple cloud and device-friendly iteration of Pages**, pops up suggestions as I go. Making the process stressful, like having a bad boss on my back. But I get through and do alright. Once I adapt, it does not truly hurt my flow, take me out of the words I want. If I want to write shamazzle as a way of describing how the fictional female Shazam would bedazzle or (in my quirkier moods, vajazzle)––I can.
The writing platforms that truly annoy me are the not only cloud-enabled but also cloud-accessed––which tend to intrude in a huge way, leading me to suspect that social media gurus are not linguistic innovators or particularly attuned to that most complex of human modes of expression.
They are, in a word, distracted individuals who are foisting their distractions on us.
EVEN (future novel/HBO series) tangent: these Silicon Valley types are in Town parlance the enablers, or “ens.” For the 1970s eco-conscious modeled ruling class, they are a means to an ends, the ones who allow Town as a formal construct to survive. And with it the fabric (through fabric, global warming has, if not reversed, been slowed to a manageable rate). Meanwhile there is the whole scenario the Acad has set up in an apparently virgin tropical paradise.
Back to the wonky tech talk: what I despise and why I continue to write on Pages (or at a pinch Note), is Facebook’s*** practice of changing words for you forcefully , making you to click a tiny x at the bottom of “unconventional” words you are trying to create and want to keep. Simple ones, like badass or onmiscape. This results in major time wastage and macular degeneration.
I propose no less than that Facebook is insidious to the future of linguistic diversity. Joyce would be rolling in his grave and even Eliot would sympathize.****
These diabolical programs have not only pushed words from the forefront of feeds, but they have slimmed down the English language along predictable paths.
I resent this and I rebel by not using Facebook nearly as much as when it was fun and messy. (Full disclosure: Since losing iPhone at Malasimbo, I am smartphone free and loving the un-pushed life).
#endwriter
Guimaras, This year of our Lord 1574.
I just spent a day doing a dance in Pages trying to lose the red line in “occasionally.” It finally disappeared, but not before I went through five or six attempts.
This red line dance is an intentional setting “spellcheck through red underline, but do not correct” and I think I’ve got aficionado, bureau, and Massachusetts down through the process. I can usually get restaurant right (don’t ask me why this previously befuddled me) and there is a word with a couple troublesome middle c’s and s’s (which I forget) that is seeing improvement.
There are some productive uses of technology and I embrace them when they help my flow. Forget that the latest version of Apple’s once-glorious Pages (09) lost 90 percent of its layout functionality, dumbed down for easy use on mobile device.*
Notes, the latest Apple cloud and device-friendly iteration of Pages**, pops up suggestions as I go. Making the process stressful, like having a bad boss on my back. But I get through and do alright. Once I adapt, it does not truly hurt my flow, take me out of the words I want. If I want to write shamazzle as a way of describing how the fictional female Shazam would bedazzle or (in my quirkier moods, vajazzle)––I can.
The writing platforms that truly annoy me are the not only cloud-enabled but also cloud-accessed––which tend to intrude in a huge way, leading me to suspect that social media gurus are not linguistic innovators or particularly attuned to that most complex of human modes of expression.
They are, in a word, distracted individuals who are foisting their distractions on us.
EVEN (future novel/HBO series) tangent: these Silicon Valley types are in Town parlance the enablers, or “ens.” For the 1970s eco-conscious modeled ruling class, they are a means to an ends, the ones who allow Town as a formal construct to survive. And with it the fabric (through fabric, global warming has, if not reversed, been slowed to a manageable rate). Meanwhile there is the whole scenario the Acad has set up in an apparently virgin tropical paradise.
Back to the wonky tech talk: what I despise and why I continue to write on Pages (or at a pinch Note), is Facebook’s*** practice of changing words for you forcefully , making you to click a tiny x at the bottom of “unconventional” words you are trying to create and want to keep. Simple ones, like badass or onmiscape. This results in major time wastage and macular degeneration.
I propose no less than that Facebook is insidious to the future of linguistic diversity. Joyce would be rolling in his grave and even Eliot would sympathize.****
These diabolical programs have not only pushed words from the forefront of feeds, but they have slimmed down the English language along predictable paths.
I resent this and I rebel by not using Facebook nearly as much as when it was fun and messy. (Full disclosure: Since losing iPhone at Malasimbo, I am smartphone free and loving the un-pushed life).
#endwriter
Guimaras, This year of our Lord 1574.
*At least, by being totally nonfunctional, the latest version of Pages prevents me from attempting to be my own publisher and layout editor. (For the same reason, sayonara iMovie, Photos––moving toward totally distraction free). Incidentally, all this talk of Apple devices brings me back to thoughts of Dennis, who is fighting.
** Actually, Notes works for all media types, I guess that is the future. Waiting for some multi-dimentional artist to create a "Note-book." Which leads to a fundamental question: how to partition the written word, which is what I really want to see, from the distractions that are pushed on me?
*** Weebly does this too, though it is a blog design platform, not on the same level of sin.
**** This is not quite the end of the story––forced linguistic sameness opens its own evolutionary pathways. In EVEN there is an intellectual clique that actively blogs in algorithmically new ways along certain channels, staying ahead of the bots. These endwriters actually go where fabric cannot as a capitalist platform (considering economic paradoxes that get increasingly well defined as the years pass and little progress is made on global warming). Through advanced SEO and the ability to influence linguistic and (Pandora-fed) music trends, the endwriters push profoundly toward a cloud-influenced reality that is sustainability oriented. They bypass the physical altogether and go for the information jugular––for a cause. The creation of the first truly "non-favoring-the-rich-countries" global agreement with teeth (move over WTO and United Nations) EVEN––the Environmental and Engineering Neutrality Pact.
** Actually, Notes works for all media types, I guess that is the future. Waiting for some multi-dimentional artist to create a "Note-book." Which leads to a fundamental question: how to partition the written word, which is what I really want to see, from the distractions that are pushed on me?
*** Weebly does this too, though it is a blog design platform, not on the same level of sin.
**** This is not quite the end of the story––forced linguistic sameness opens its own evolutionary pathways. In EVEN there is an intellectual clique that actively blogs in algorithmically new ways along certain channels, staying ahead of the bots. These endwriters actually go where fabric cannot as a capitalist platform (considering economic paradoxes that get increasingly well defined as the years pass and little progress is made on global warming). Through advanced SEO and the ability to influence linguistic and (Pandora-fed) music trends, the endwriters push profoundly toward a cloud-influenced reality that is sustainability oriented. They bypass the physical altogether and go for the information jugular––for a cause. The creation of the first truly "non-favoring-the-rich-countries" global agreement with teeth (move over WTO and United Nations) EVEN––the Environmental and Engineering Neutrality Pact.
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