So, I’ve been noticing a strong uptick in the use of “the cloud” to refer to online, decentralized storage, computing and program-hosting lately. No shortage of companies are talking about their “cloud computing” services (including my hosting company, Joyent), and it’s become one of those “gotta have it” corporate buzzwords, and it seems like no company’s marketing people will let them release a website, product or service which isn’t in some way cloudy.

This phenomenon itself isn’t noteworthy from a linguistic standpoint (“Web 2.0” seems to have been the same sort of trendy buzzword at some point), but it occurred to me today that for many less-tech-saavy users, this “in the cloud” phrasing might actually be affecting how people view these services, and I think that might be why companies have latched onto this term so strongly.

Let’s take, for example, Apple’s coming “iCloud” information hosting service. Apple is increasingly targeting the non-tech-saavy crowd, and this service, like most of their recent developments, is meant to be largely transparent to the end user. Once you’ve signed up, iCloud will take your music, your photos, your documents, your books, your backups, your contacts, calendars and mail, and any additional information you add in through third party programs, and make it instantly available on all of your devices. As they put it on their own website: “Create a document, iCloud stores it, and pushes it to your devices”. Bam. Magic. You turn the service on and suddenly your data is on all of your devices. Who wouldn’t want that?

A rose by any other name…

They’re doing something linguistically fascinating, though: they make no mention of their machines, servers, databases or storage (at least on the user-facing sites). You create, something cloudy happens, it’s on all your machines. They’ve de-emphasized the middle step. Mind you, Apple’s not the only “cloud” provider to do this (Google Docs de-emphasizes the middle step too), but Apple is certainly the most flagrant. But why bother? Why de-emphasize?

Well, I’ve been toying around with a new hobby. Whenever somebody says “in the cloud”, I’ve found it entertaining to replace it with “on somebody else’s computer”. This simple replacement brings me much joy in the absurdity it creates and how oddly different it makes the act sound:

“Our main working copy of the paper is on somebody else’s computer for group editing, but it’s password protected so nobody but us can edit it”

“My data is safe, I store my address book, mail, passwords, documents and photos on somebody else’s computer.”

“Oh, don’t worry, all of our business information is backed up on somebody else’s computer.”

When put like that, we’re emphasizing the storage, the step that Apple and Google and most of the other cloud providers don’t really want you to think about too much. We’re emphasizing the fact that your data is sitting on a hard drive in another state, watched by a sysadmin who you don’t know. We’re emphasizing that when you put something on the cloud, it’s no longer just yours, and whereas naive users might not hesitate to put something into an amorphous cloud, actually transferring their data onto another computer might tickle enough of their sense of privacy to make them hesitate to upload those bank statements or that racy note from a lover.

In addition, we emphasize the fact that the data is there for the cloud provider to use per the TOS. How much do you think that the recording industry would pay to analyze en masse the music library of hundreds of thousands of iGadget users, even if just for market research? How valuable would it be for a website to figure out where to advertise by asking a company storing passwords “in the cloud” which sites are also visited by people who have stored passwords for their site?

Simply put, putting your data “in the cloud” is amorphous. It’s a mystery, but at the end of it, it just works. Putting your data on somebody else’s computer can get the same ends, but it forces you to think about your data in between your machine and your other devices.

Clouds aren’t necessarily bad

This may sound like a paranoid luddite’s rant, but I use the cloud. I currently use MobileMe, Apple’s current iCloud equivalent, for calendar and address book syncing. I use DropBox to keep my grocery list current across all my devices. I have an SFTP provider for storing backups of my data between at-home backups, and in case of emergency. The cloud can provide, in addition to convenience, a type of security against loss. As a friend of mine pointed out on Google+ (a cloud app):

Somebody else’s computer, with extensive redundancy and backup systems, which makes it much less likely to be lost if my house burns down. It is one kind of security. Not the “no one else will look at it” kind, but the “I won’t lose it in a domestic disaster” kind.

This is certainly true, and one of the best arguments for decentralized, cloud-like computing. Data on my computer in my backpack is fleeting. Data on a well-backed-up server in Dropbox’s massive datacenter is much less likely to be dropped, stolen, lit on fire or broken. These services have a use, whether convenience, ease-of-use for non-tech users, decentralization, or simply as an offsite backup of your data.

The techies who have read this far are doubtless thinking “Come on, I knew this already”. Of course data stored in the cloud is stored on somebody else’s computers. Heck, geeks like myself can likely picture server farms, maybe even imagining the mass storage required. They have a good idea of what sorts of things cloud providers can and can’t do across petabytes of data.

It’s not like I’m blowing the whistle on a massive conspiracy here. Anybody who has thought more than 20 minutes about the idea of a cloud knows that information has to go somewhere, and has deduced that presumably, it’s sitting on somebody else’s computer. Apple’s not choosing to skirt the issue so they can “pull a fast one” on the entire internet, they’re doing it because it’s less intimidating to new users. Google Docs is neglecting to mention their servers because they don’t need to. That’s not why you should be using the phrase “on somebody else’s computer”.

We should be talking about uploading your documents onto somebody else’s computer with grandma when she gets her new laptop and decides that that “iCloud” folder is just like her hard drive. We should be discussing storing information on somebody else’s computer for the clueless CFO who wants to upload the company’s records onto DropBox to be able to work on them from his new iPad.

We should be talking about “the cloud” as storing information on somebody else’s computer so that people will think, if only for a second, about whether they care that that picture, document, or file is something they would be OK with storing on somebody else’s computer.

Because TOSes, “privacy policies”, talking around the issue and other calming language aside, that’s what the cloud is. It’s a vast collection of other people’s computers, and in order to decide intelligently whether you want your data there, you need to know where “there” is.

Tagged with Computers and Software, Corporate Language, Language and Thought, Language Usage, Language, Computers, and the Internet, Words, Phrases, and Idioms | 6 Comments


As I mentioned before, I’ve spent the last few days out of town, at a major conference for one of my other jobs. The conference was interesting to me as a phonetician, hearing all the various accents from around the country, but the most interesting (and funny) language moment occurred during the closing ceremonies.

A slip worthy of the ages

The conference, discussing Residence Hall life, took place on a college campus, and the 1000+ people attending were each assigned rooms in the Residence Halls on campus. So, everybody was staying in first-year dorms, with the same shared bathrooms, roommates, and tiny rooms as any incoming student would have. By no means were these luxury accommodations, but they didn’t have to be, we’re all used to Dorm life anyways, and what was provided was quite sufficient for the weekend.

Perhaps most wonderful Freudian slip I’ve seen in a long time happened during the closing ceremonies for this conference. So, myself and 1000+ other people are sitting in the main arena, and one of the conference coordinators is speaking to the entire group. He’s going through and thanking each different group or committee that made the conference possible, and then finally, he says (paraphrased) “I’d like to thank the University’s Housing and Conference services department for providing us with our unremarkable accommodations”.

A long moment passed, and then a good portion of the arena burst into laughter. He realized several seconds later what he had said, but by then, it was too late, and his correction was overwhelmed by the laughter, and his original meaning of “remarkable accommodations” was lost to history.

This is a truly amazing example of a “Freudian slip”.

Parapraxis 101

A Freudian Slip (or Parapraxis) is where one’s subconscious thoughts are somehow expressed on the surface through their words or actions. This often happens through name replacement (“I love you Laura” when Laura is your mistress’ name, not your wife’s), or through other “slips of the tongue” (“I would do anything to you” as opposed to “I would do anything for you”). No matter the form it takes, the most basic requirement for a speech error to be considered an instance of Parapraxis is that you end up communicating something you didn’t intend to but were likely thinking subconsciously.

According the Wikipedia article on Freudian Slips, Freud thought that these slips had a psychological meaning:

The Freudian slip is named after Sigmund Freud, who described the phenomenon he called Fehlleistung (literally meaning “faulty action” in German, but termed as parapraxis in English) in his 1901 book The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Freud gives several examples of seemingly trivial, bizarre or nonsensical Freudian slips in Psychopathology; the analysis is often quite lengthy and complex, as was the case with many of the dreams in The Interpretation of Dreams.

Popularization of the term has diluted its technical meaning in some contexts to include any slip-of-the-tongue phenomenon, often in an attempt by the user to humorously assign hidden motives or sexual innuendo to the mistake. It is not clear, however, what Freud considered an “innocent” mistake, or if he thought that there were any innocent mistakes. The enormous quantity of slips analyzed in psychopathology, many of which are banal or apparently trivial, would seem to indicate that Freud felt almost any seemingly tiny slip or hesitation would respond to analysis.

Context is everything

The social power of these slips lies in the context in which they occur. For instance, had we all been housed in a five star hotel and the speaker still said “unremarkable”, it might still be funny, but it’d be more of a simple speech error. The beauty of a Freudian slip comes from the fact that it reveals the truth (or one’s true feelings), even while a person tries to cover it up.

Because everybody knew that the accommodations were, in fact, quite unremarkable, when he misspoke, it was both extremely funny and extremely telling. He unconsciously violated the social norm as well as catching himself in his own distortion of the truth in front of 1000+ people.

So, the moral of this story is that you’re never safe from your own inner thoughts. Although some people can become very adept at lying (or mild distortion of the truth), a single speech error could pop up and blow your entire cover. You can pay close attention to your words, and try to suppress your subconscious, but sooner or later, everybody slips up.

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Language and Thought, Language Humor, Psycholinguistics, Speech and Grammar Errors | 1 Comment


Nearly two months ago, I wrote a long post about Phonetics and how I got into Linguistics. Well, tonight I’d like to post a followup, because I’ve just realized that my past description wasn’t entirely accurate.

There, I describe my introduction to Linguistics as largely a question of fate and terrible Russian textbooks. That is all true, but only tonight have I realized and acknowledged the secondary (and at the same time, primary) reason why I am where I am: I thought the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis was true, and wanted to use it to improve life. Let me explain.

Applied Linguistic Relativity and you

I’ve discussed this idea (also referred to as ‘Linguistic Relativity’) elsewhere on this site before (view them all here), and in the interest of time (and friendliness to people who’ve not read the past posts), I’m just going to quote my past explanation posted here. I encourage you to read that full post to get a better idea of the controversy and guesswork involved in any exploration of Linguistic relativity, but for a quick summary, I’ve quoted the most explanatory parts:

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is a blanket term for the idea that the grammar and lexicon of a person’s language subtly affects their thoughts and perspectives on the world. It’s a very hotly contested issue in modern Linguistics, and although the most extreme variations (the idea that language determines your thought) have been disproved through some pretty ingenious color studies, the more subtle varieties are still supported in some senses.

If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true, a speaker of the Hopi language (which has a very different system of tenses than English) will perceive time in a fundamentally different way than an English speaker. Similarly, a Spanish speaker will have a slightly different view of the world than an English speaker, simply due to the underlying differences between the two languages. If this is, in fact, the case, then there are huge ramifications in Linguistics, Cognitive Science, and the world in general.

Basically, I believed that one’s language can limit one’s thought. If you don’t have a word, you don’t have a concept, and your brain is bound. I believed that language was the fundamental chain that bound us all, so insidiously that we don’t even know it.

So, if language is the fundamental chain that binds our cognition, then what can we do to escape? Well, we have two options.

One would be to raise our children without language. This would certainly remove the binds of language, but cause them to be incapable of most of human interaction. Without language of some sort, there likely wouldn’t be civilization, society, or even basic human cooperation. This would clearly be, as the American idiom goes, throwing the baby out with the bathwater (getting rid of the good parts of something simply because there’s a small imperfection).

The second option, simply put, is to change language as we know it. This was my plan.

Not ambitious at all, why?

My plan was simple: If a person’s language puts limits on their cognition, then really, all you need to do is change the language in such a way that those limits are removed. If language is a dam on the vast cognitive river, then to get more flow, you make a less restrictive dam. Thus, my love of language creation was born.

My hope was to create a language through which anything was expressible. I still have between 30 and 50 pages of hastily scribbled blueprints for my language (‘evlit’ was the working title), ranging from the philosophical needs to the grammatical needs. That little strip of light that shows up on the wall because of the slight imperfection of the fitting of the metal pieces of the fluorescent fixture in my Russian classroom my Freshman year would be just as easy and quick to describe as, say, a gray cat. Regularity would abound, simplicity would be a constant, and ease of learning would be maximized. Ideas from computer science, philosophy, and more all bounced around in my head in an effort to come up with a language that would not just function, but would set our minds free.

Perhaps this all sounds strange to you all, and I’ll admit, it was strange. However, I’d like you to imagine for a second that language was really the invisible chain that binds us all. Imagine being able to do something that not only freed a single person from bondage, not only a single community or even state, but the entire human race. I felt that if I could actually create a language which was truly “better”, more versatile, and allowed true cognitive freedom, I could truly help the entire human race.

The Russian department pushed me away, sure. Languages intrigued me, no doubt. However, that’s not really why I’m here today. When I signed up for my Intro to Linguistics class, I wanted to learn the nature of the chains, so I could cast them off, then help other people do the same.

Realization

I still vividly remember one day, around three years ago, walking back towards the department with my Intro to Linguistics professor and talking to him about language creation. I explained my ideas for creating a new, improved language, as he listened quietly. We arrived back in his office, he sat down behind his desk, and he shared an insight that has affected me to this day. He turned to me and said: “Well, all you’re going to be doing is re-encoding how things work in your mind as an English speaker, just using different sounds and grammar”.

Pop. There went my plan. One offhand comment showed me the folly of my idea. I tried to fight the realization in my own mind for a few weeks, but really, it died right there. If language does fundamentally bind my thought, how the heck could I escape it long enough to loosen the chains. If I’m bound, I won’t be able to free myself, because I literally cannot exist outside of this bondage. By the time we’re old enough to understand and use language, then we’re old enough that we’re trapped. Soon after that, I realized that really, whether or not language affects our thought is irrelevant.

As the Buddhist monk Shantideva once wrote, “If there is a problem and you are able to do something about it, why despair? And if there is a problem and you are not able to do anything about it, why despair?”. If language does, in fact, change how we think, well, we’re already bound and we can’t really escape, so there’s nothing we can do. If language doesn’t change how we think, then there’s no problem at all. Nobody’s bound, and there’s nothing we need to do. Either we’re bound, or we’re not, and we’ll never be able to tell the difference.

Even I were somehow able to create a truly better language, and even if it helped people, it would also likely result in a great linguistic genocide. Many of the remaining languages on Earth would gradually be abandoned in favor of a more useful and more powerful language, and the blood of all those grammars would be on my hands. So, I’ve realized that my goal, my dream, of changing and “improving” language to help the world is not only impossible, but probably not even a good idea. Yet, I’m still a linguist.

Now what?

Language is truly incredible. Next time you see a conversation taking place, sit back and watch. Patterns of air pressure, body language, and facial expressions are being used to express the millions of thoughts flying around inside our heads, and even more amazing, those things can be interpreted and understood by other people. The fact that we have a means of communication at all, let alone one so full of nuance and beauty, is simply miraculous.

I might have come to Linguistics because I wanted to improve language, and because I thought I could use it to help the world. The reason I’m still here is because I’ve realized that human language is not only sufficient for what we need, it’s truly miraculous. This may sound corny, but I am captivated by the complexity, the grace, and the sheer pragmatic beauty of grammar, sound, and the cognition required to get it there.

Nobody knows exactly where language came from, or when it developed. Heck, nobody knows exactly how language works in our minds, how we learn it, and how we understand it. We have described elements of it, have made lots of theories, and we’ve even made some progress on understanding how we go about making language. However, there are still many mysteries out there.

I might not set the world free with a single word, but language is a fundamental aspect of our everyday lives, if not the fundamental aspect. By studying language and the mysteries involved, I’m studying not only grammar, sound, or cognition, but human life itself.

If that’s not important, what is?

Tagged with Conventional Linguistics, Created Languages, Followups, Language and Thought, Language Creation, Notes | 8 Comments

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