The only (somewhat) language-related items in this year's New York Times Year in Ideas were ways to Offload Your Memories in voice and/or text form, the business about Proving You're Human by reading obfuscated text, the idea of Quiet Parties (at which talking is forbidden), and the fad for pseudo-scientifically reading the Body Language of celebrity photos. This is out of 67 or so. And I'm stretching to cite those four. Well, maybe I should add the Pod Car, which promises some interaction with its driver via speech. Is this the best that language science, the language industries, and language culture (high and low) can do?
Posted by Mark Liberman at December 13, 2003 04:51 PM