Episode 96 The Earth’s language

Structured Visions

Image by Elena Mozhvilo

We start the episode, as always, with a couple of questions:

1. What are the differences between spoken/signed language and written/printed/digital language?
2. Where are you?

There’s an answer to Question 2 that will be true for anyone who says it. ‘I am here.’ But if you write it on a piece of paper, and then leave the room, it stops being true.

Does that make spoken language more genuine?

Or is written language more reliable because it’s more durable, less ephemeral? (‘Put it in writing.’)

We explore questions around spoken/written language in relation to what French philosopher Jacques Derrida calls the ‘metaphysics of presence’. And also in relation to a quite touching France Télécom advert from the ’90s.

The discussion leads to a conversation about non-human language, specifically, the language of the Earth itself. Both human language and the Earth’s language are systems for structuring information. Human language is structured around the principle of selfhood, which leads us to the whimsical fancy that the separate, distinct self exists prior to the grammar that created it.

The story I read in Episode 96 is ‘The loneliness of the literate species’.

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