4 ms·

I think my favorite contextual example of this is the opening line from Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead chann

I think my favorite contextual example of this is the opening line from Neuromancer: "The sky above the port was the colour of television, tuned to a dead channel." Means something very different now.

toomanybeersies 6y ago
I wonder if 2000n years from now, scholars will be wondering over the meaning of that sentence, the same way that they currently discuss the meaning of "wine-dark sea" in the Iliad and the Odyssey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer))
- Talanes 6y ago
  That section on ancient languages tending to lack blue is very interesting. I wonder if there was just a lack of blue in their environment. If the local birds and flowers don't contain any blue, then you just have the sky and the sea(or whatever large body of water.) If the majority of the blue you see in the world is the sky and the sea, would you just start to think of blue as a blank? If you just consider blue as something more like we consider white, then any competing hues dominate what you describe. So just like white with the tiniest bit of red becomes pink, a purplish sea becomes red?
  - goblin89 6y ago
    Homer’s wine-dark sea leads down an interesting rabbit-hole of thinking about perception, other minds, shared labels for sensations, how one individual consciousness is shaped by (exists only in context of?) others, and the implications of the information age with more extensive inter-mind connections and increasingly numerous and specific shared labels.
airstrike 6y ago
I guess that means perfect blue skies these days haha
- smelendez 6y ago
  Neil Gaiman made a joke about this in 1996 in the novel Neverwhere. Search for "dead channel at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/12/some-days-bears-on-top.asp http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/12/some-days-bears-on-top...
- m4rtink 6y ago
  Or black sky with a moving "NO SIGNAL" notification box. That would actually fit to a cyberpunk novel I guess. ;-)

toomanybeersies 6y ago

I wonder if 2000n years from now, scholars will be wondering over the meaning of that sentence, the same way that they currently discuss the meaning of "wine-dark sea" in the Iliad and the Odyssey (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine-dark_sea_(Homer))

Talanes 6y ago
That section on ancient languages tending to lack blue is very interesting. I wonder if there was just a lack of blue in their environment. If the local birds and flowers don't contain any blue, then you just have the sky and the sea(or whatever large body of water.) If the majority of the blue you see in the world is the sky and the sea, would you just start to think of blue as a blank? If you just consider blue as something more like we consider white, then any competing hues dominate what you describe. So just like white with the tiniest bit of red becomes pink, a purplish sea becomes red?
- goblin89 6y ago
  Homer’s wine-dark sea leads down an interesting rabbit-hole of thinking about perception, other minds, shared labels for sensations, how one individual consciousness is shaped by (exists only in context of?) others, and the implications of the information age with more extensive inter-mind connections and increasingly numerous and specific shared labels.

airstrike 6y ago

I guess that means perfect blue skies these days haha

smelendez 6y ago
Neil Gaiman made a joke about this in 1996 in the novel Neverwhere. Search for "dead channel at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/12/some-days-bears-on-top.asp http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/12/some-days-bears-on-top...
m4rtink 6y ago
Or black sky with a moving "NO SIGNAL" notification box. That would actually fit to a cyberpunk novel I guess. ;-)