Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

NOTE: use Perl; is on undef hiatus. You can read content, but you can't post it. More info will be forthcoming forthcomingly.

use Perl

All the Perl that's Practical to Extract and Report

Str and Buf -- I think I get it now More | Login | Reply

The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Without JavaScript enabled, you might want to use the classic discussion system instead. If you login, you can remember this preference.

Babel-17 (Score:2)

by jmm (276) <johnNO@SPAMperlwolf.com> on 2009.07.06 12:54 (#69322) Journal

This "you can't think the wrong thoughts" target reminds me of the novel Babel-17 by Samuel Delaney which uses the same sort of concept but in a human language that causes the person who thinks in that language to automatically think the right thoughts in a very powerful way.

Reply to This
- Re: (Score:1)
  
  by masak (6289)
  
  I think the idea is sufficiently old. Umberto Eco details various attempts made during the years in his book The Search for a Perfect Language [amazon.com]. Newspeak in 1984 [amazon.com] has words selectively pruned from it so that dangerous thought becomes difficult or impossible.
  - Re: (Score:2)
    
    by jmm (276)
    
    I think it is strongly related to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity
    - Re: (Score:1)
      
      by masak (6289)
      
      Aye. I even linked to that in my blog post. :)

Get More Comments

Stories, comments, journals, and other submissions on use Perl; are Copyright 1998-2006, their respective owners.