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It’s alive! New computer learns language like a human, almost.

By Dennis Baron
A computer at Carnegie Mellon University is reading the internet and learning from it in much the same way that humans learn language and acquire knowledge, by soaking it all up and figuring it out in our heads.

People’s brains work better some days than others, and eventually we will all run out of steam, but the creators of NELL, the Never Ending Language Learner, want it to run forever, getting better every day in every way, until it becomes the largest repository imaginable of all that’s e’er been thought or writ.

The English Language Unity Act: Big Government Only a Tea Partier Could Love

By Dennis Baron
Tea Partiers seem intent on throwing more and more of the American government overboard. Yet there’s one area where both these wing nuts and many ordinary conservatives support more big government, not less: they want the government to make everyone in America speak English.

Facebook says, “All your face are belong to us.”

By Dennis Baron
Facebook wants to trademark the word “face.” The social networker which connects more than 500 million users has already shown how we can all live together as one big happy set of FBF’s by forcing other sites to drop “book” from their names, and now, in application no. 78980756 to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Facebook is asserting its ownership of the word “face” as well.

Is it “Ms.” or “Miss”?

By Dennis Baron
A rare occurrence of “Ms.” in 1885 suggests that the term is an abbreviation of “Miss.” Ever since “Ms.” emerged as a marriage-neutral alternative to “Miss” and “Mrs.” in the 1970s, linguists have been trying to trace the origins of this new honorific. It turns out that “Ms.” is not so new after all. The form goes back at least to the 1760s, when it served as an abbreviation for “Mistress” (remember Shakespeare’s Mistress Quickly?) and for “Miss,” already a shortened form of “Mistress,” which was also sometimes spelled “Mis.”

Technology Update: Flying Books Can Be Dangerous

One of the big news stories this week was about JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater, who famously unleashed an expletive-ridden rant over his plane’s PA system, then pulled emergency-evacuation chute lever and made a dramatic sliding exit onto the JFK tarmac. It is only appropriate, I think, that we take this moment to consider the intersection between e-readers and airplane safety. Please pull your desk chairs into the full, upright position and enjoy the following musings from Dennis Baron.

The iPad: What is a Gutenberg moment, Anyway?

Dennis Baron looks at “Gutenberg moments”.

The Book, the Scroll, and the Web

Dennis Baron looks at how we read.

Wikipedia: Write First, Ask Questions Later

Dennis Baron looks at Wikipedia.

Should Everybody Write?
Or is There Enough Junk on the Internet Already?

Dennis Baron looks at the destabilizing technologies of communication.