Reboot 9: Ben Blench

Posted on May 25, 2007 under blog ,

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