cruel to be kind

Ben Blench is an english man in Amsterdam, a linguist by trade but now a copywriter working at Media Catalyst.

His talk is “Newspeak - New technologies, new languages” and a grand unified theory of everything - or what do George Orwell, the Bible, Kraftwerk and ROFLCOPTERS have in common?

Ben and I talk about:

• language is the distinguishing factor that makes us unique as a species on planet earth
• what makes human language different from animal communication or what is the step above
• do programming languages count as languages?
• why there is a different me when he speaks another language
• why computers fail - they are not just words
• Scotty, “hello computer” and going to Star Trek Conventions
• why telepathy would work so much better than words
• pidgin english, international english and proper english or are there just “englishes”?
• when you learn a language, do you learn the culture too?
• his interest in other areas to connect and exchange ideas
• Book suggestion: Steven Pinker, The Language Instinct

Download MP3 (32 min, 18,8 MB)

Visit his profile on the reboot page or visit his blog.

[Link for the podcast feed - if you subscribe in itunes, be careful to adapt the settings or you only will get one episode per day!]

Tags: reboot9, pre conference podcast,interview, Ben Blench

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