>>> elimination of vowels

and here: http://hyperstition.abstractdynamics.org/archives/003448.html

Find, fund, fond, fend

That's 4 out of 5 vowels used right there off the top of my head. Tell me again how they are redundant? Maybe it makes sense to eliminate vowels in written Semitic languages where every consonant is typically followed by a vowel (at least in Hebrew) but I am not sure why it is automatically a good thing for English. In fact, right now in Hebrew the trend is to introduce vowels. For example Vav acts as "o".

Experiments show that as long as the first and last letters of the word are kept you can garble the middle and the meaning will still be decipherable. So you could make the case that all letters are redundant.

DigitalDjigit - but it's not that simple surely.
"Think you'll fnd it under the couch" - fund, fond, or fend - don't think so! Redundancy isn't necessarily hidden in the most obvious place - you might fnd it next door.
More interesting is the possibility that collapsing informative (nonredundant) difference is itself productive in certain contexts.
In any case, definitely agree with mark that this technologically awakened atavism is worthy of more than trite dismissal.

DigitalDjigit - a few good essays on how the 'catastrophe of vowel' directly affects the cognitive patterns of the nervous system and how vowelless alphabets incite complex cognitive insurgencies:

Changeux, J.P. (1988) “Learning and selection in the Nervous system,” in D. de Kerckhove and C. Lumsden (eds), The Alphabet and the Brain and the rest of essays (all highly recommended)

Hellige, F. (1993) Hemispheric Asymmetry, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press

Howard, D. (1987) “Reading Without Letters?” in M. Coltheart, G. Satori, and R. Job (eds), The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Language

And at last: Porush, D. (1998) Telepathy: Alphabetic Consciousness and the Age of Cyborg Illiteracy” in J. Broadhurst Dixon and E. J. Cassidy (eds), Virtual Futures

As Nick mentioned you may find it easy when working with one word but when you encounter a more complex and extended string of writing units, the process is so difficult and sometimes impossible.

TH VRL CLTR F DS MKS VR XCHNG F BD FLDS N CT F TTL LV ND MRDR SM S “J MRT” T RGSM. DS GVS NW MNNG T THR CR

As Nick mentioned you may find it easy when working with one word but when you encounter a more complex and extended string of writing units, the process is so difficult and sometimes impossible.

But surely that's an argument against the functional redundancy of most vowels?

I will be convinced that texting is doing something interesting when I see it actually communicating something new. The fact that people are abbreviating everything in order to send messages is as old as the hills. Text speak is doing nothing that people weren't doing with telegrams decades ago.

Ah, so the medium isn't the message, then?

Too much time in philosophy depts I reckon --- nothing new ever happens --- it was all decided 2 millennia ago in Greece ---- :-)

reminds me of Greg Hunt on jungle not being anything new; 'didn't ppl do this on the ol' pianner'?

The fact that people are abbreviating everything in order to send messages is as old as the hills.

And thereofre not interesting?
Text speak is doing nothing that people weren't doing with telegrams decades ago.

Presumably why D/G place such importance on the telegraphic semiotic as a privileged form of communication then...

no that’s not really a direct argument against the redundancy of vowels ... it was meant to emphasize on the 'cognitive / writing complexity' of vowelless alphabets which itself renders the vowel-based writing systems(which cannot be merely reduced to the generally accepted dimension of WRITING) as communicational tyrannies (or effective communicational defense mechanisms); Following the recommended articles, one will finally ask “what does a vowel do?” (a simplified but crucial question)

Firstly, vowels are among the fundamental anthropomorphic oversimplifying systems over communication (worse than redundancy) Back to neo-Sumerian age: see how the channel regimes of hieroglyphs/pictographs or tools of ‘corporealization / stabilization’ and transcendental informatics directly deposit as vowels, making a consolidated repression on the cognitive interfaces or the affect space of the nervous system and how vowels are customized as the Nucleus of ‘representation’. On the hand, consider vowelless alphabets and the gates they creatively open (just a few obvious threads): right-brain processing (i.e. slow processing or taking a more engaging paths for interlocking with communication systems) [1]; engineering semantic irresolution which brings an immense tolerance of informatic pollution (suspension, horror, complexities, deferral, etc.), this offers a great potential for engaging with ambiguities and abstractions; the resistance to voice (the authority: pharaoh?) is exceptionally increased; etc.

[1] also visuo-spatial processing and the ability of identity-recognition of different objects with different configurations are highly promoted.

Mark, you're still not telling me what is actually new (or, indeed, interesting) about text messaging. I might buy the stratic nature of predictive texting so long as you fail to reprogramme your phone by, ermm, using different words and thereby adding them to the database. However, if you're going to go all D&G on me, you'll have to convince me why texting is difference in kind rather than simply difference in degree when compared to, for example, a telegram or, indeed, a phone call.

Reza, I have a great deal of difficulty following you, but if I read you correctly, what you are actually saying is that the lack of vowels leads to ambiguity ('engineering semantic irresolution') because one may read that which is missing in more than one way (informatic pollution), whereas vowels are inserted in order to give certainty ('oversimplifying systems over communication ') of meaning. This may help to emphasise the fact that language is representational, but is hardly an argument for the functional redundancy of vowels. I simply cannot underestand how a vowel could possibly be more anthropomorphic than a consonant, although I may well be misunderstanding you.

OK to be a bit less flippant:

probably isn't a great deal of difference between telegraphic communication and txt msging. Except (and I genuinely don't know the answer to this): did telegram messaging actually collapse words in the way that txting does? My suspicion is that it just skipped words, not that it contracted them.

A widespread form of communication, spontaneously occurring, that dispenses with vowels just is interesting - partly coz of all the wealth of material Reza has provided on vowelless alphabets.

Difference between phone calls and txting is self-evident; there isn't the pressure on removing redundancy in phone calls where space is not a premium. Actually, saying that there's no difference between txt spk and verbal conversation would be granting that vowels are functionally redundant in speech in many cases.

Yeh, Reza, I need a bit more on anthropomorphism. I'm sympathetic to the drift, obv...

One important thing is the rhythmic function of consonants (as opposed to vowels).

johneffay -- Sorry ... think a total misunderstanding happening here: did I mention language is representational? Vowels are the micro-factories of representation for sure but language ...???? (you cannot easily claim so when working with vowelless alphabets) ...

>>> I simply cannot underestand how a vowel could possibly be more anthropomorphic than a consonant, although I may well be misunderstanding you. Also meaning, think it’s is the less important issue

Well, maybe if you reread those few examples on vowel-based and vowelless alphabets you may find out why vowels are repressively anthropomorphic in their thirst to spawn overcoding regimes wherever they go. If one system authoritatively installs ultra-overcoding / domesticating regimes on writing (all modes of writing in every recess of communication), nervous system, cognitive / social interfaces, etc. and take the most uncreative ways of communication ... then you should convince me why it is not functionally re-dundant? sorry I think I can’t help you on this thread until you first take at least a very short journey (pre-requisite) back to the neo-Sumerian age and watch the process of vowelization, it’s origins and how the vowels work.. Follow the lines of insurgency among the slaves of Egypt and how they incited revolution through all despotic / bureaucratic constructions of Pharaoh ... get closer and zoom on their weapon.

PS. You should not reduce ‘oversimplifying system over communication’ to certainty of meaning. (please reread those a few example on how vowelless alphabets work) ... seems you have already presupposed meaning as the central core of the discussion that you ‘merely’ connect oversimplification to the certainty of meaning (what is at issue here is a diverse range of oversimplifications of vocal systems, cognitive interfaces, the selective stabilization of synapses, overcoded memories, etc) ...

Hint: If you want to follow this thread, Kerckhove is a key. David Porush is also fine when directly interconnects all this to Qabalah. (And CCRU’s Daniel Barker?) ...

Mark, vowelless alphabets are just anthropomorphic as they have been engineered by the high priests of Semitic Slaves (and in their open laboratories) who unleashed their alphabetic epidemic once they composed it (no later or extra programming) ... think using the term anthropomorphic in a negative sense (economical lines of transcendence, corporealization, expression, communication, etc) is not appropriate here ... their alphabetic epidemic hit autonomy and activated as a self-propagation germline with its own uncontrollable artificial intelligence, diversities and cognitive insurgencies as soon as it was set free ... vowelless alphabets are not anthropomorphic in this negative sense but radically artificial, emerged out of participations between different lines simultaneously: hyperstitional grasp of the universe [there is no word FICTION in ancient Hebrew because it’s already a contagious fiction], numeracy, anti-image / anti-voice cognitive patterns, etc.) ... but take the path of vowels: the authoritative corporealization systems of the early syllabic/pictographic languages (entirely based on the despotic anthropomorphism or affordance-based [J. J. Gibson] cognition with the universe through representation and corporealization) are directly deposited as vowels. Vowels are also autonomous in some respects as they restrain, direct and manage, re-organize and smuggle the initial anthropomorphic transcendence of the pictographs’ corporealization systems and their cognitive / vocal repressions through the progression (evolution?) of vowel-based alphabets ... vowels are watchers: they maintain programs of their nucleus. They carry and develop their nucleus without introducing much diversity to it -- only re-organization of their nucleus by re-organizing themselves. Vowels (re-)manage and optimize the initial despotic corporealization processes and the VOICE (Who?: Pharaoh, God, Cosmos, Oedipus, Sphinx?) lurking within them from the first syllabic/pictographic place.

Mark, this may be the whole point of hyperstition, but I find it one hell of a leap to connect the stripping of vowels for, as you say, economic reasons to claims about relationships between slaves and their overseers.

did telegram messaging actually collapse words in the way that txting does?
Definitely (e.g. shld, cld), but I doubt it did it as much. What telegram messaging did do was strip out the first person pronoun and conjunctions wherever possible. To be flippant, I guess we could see this as an unconscious attempt on the part of early users of telecoms to flatten out their existence by refusing the unified subject and the transcendence of the connective synthesis.

Reza, overcoding and anthropomorphism are hardly synonymous. Using the latter term the way you seem to be, I would suggest that any language or components thereof which are in use by humans would have to be classed as anthropomorphic. I don't think that all languages are representational, although I might want to argue that all alphabets can be used as representational tools. I've read Porush and Barker, but not the others. However, I don't really want to rehash arguments that I've had before.

What I am interested in is why you think that something that overcodes is redundant. Without overcoding, decoding, and the resultant de/re/territorializations, we would simply be reduced to jelly...

Personally, I wouldn't
reduce ‘oversimplifying system over communication’ to certainty of meaning
but have no idea what else you could possibly mean by phrases such as 'semantic iressolution, other than prioritizing ambiguity within a system of communication.

>>>Reza, overcoding and anthropomorphism are hardly synonymous.

Once again, some misunderstandings: did I say ‘mere overcording’ is synonymous to anthropomorphism?

>>>What I am interested in is why you think that something that overcodes is redundant. Without overcoding, decoding, and the resultant de/re/territorializations, we would simply be reduced to jelly...

Again, did I say that something that overcodes is redundant? Surely overcoding is necessary (making translation possible, etc.) but there are different levels of overcoding: from overcoding as an essential element of communication to overcoding as a means of authorization and overcoding as a ‘regime’ which induce certain cognitive / whatever repressions and redundancies: ultra-overcoding (THIRST to overcode) as one can say.

Besides, did I say that ultra-overcoding is the only thing connected to vowel’s redundancy (read my answer to mark + other previous answers)?

>>>but have no idea what else you could possibly mean by phrases such as 'semantic irresolution, other than prioritizing ambiguity within a system of communication.

Sorry, but you’d better read it again: “seems you have already presupposed meaning as the central core of the discussion that you ‘merely’ connect oversimplification to the certainty of meaning”

I stressed on ‘merely’ ... this means I agree that ‘certainty of meaning’ is a part of the issue but certainly not the whole issue (in addition I stated a few other examples to clarify this).

Well, such discussions might be so confusing and misleading for the English/German/French speakers ... Being appropriately familiar (not just reading about them) with at least two Semitic-based languages (one ancient and one modern) and their reading / writing systems is absolutely essential to get what’s going on between the two lines (vowelless alphabets and vowel-based alphabets); this makes the discussion extremely smoother.

Anyway, thanks for the discussion ...

Hi, guys.

Just want to agree with Reza that overcoding is a symptom of anthropomorphism, this way:

IF anthropomorphism is the compulsion to attribute intelligent, rational, intentional action to the universe where it doesn't exist,

THEN overcoding (overdetermination; one-on-one-mapping; hallucinating mechanism) is one way we do it.

Overdetermined scripts - such as alphabets "perfected" with vowels to reduce ambiguity - maintain the illusion that written language captures reality, that our knowledge is transparent, weightless reflection of truth.

Also sorry I am so late to check in. Maybe it's all over excepting the whispering.

Realy good site!

Anyone that thinks txt spk is - in any way, shape or form - a good thing, needs to have their fucking bollocks removed.

I understand you lot get off on intellectualising bullshit but this is just too much.

People are dead right when they say that language is a living thing - to me that's all the more reason to stop imbeciles destroying it. Can anyone that claims txt spk is some sort of natural evolution please shoot themselves?

Thanks, I really had to get that off my chest.