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it's not English language that's changing, it's human language. Hashtags represent the implicit knowledge within human communication that there is a machine ob

by zemo 13y ago

it's not English language that's changing, it's human language. Hashtags represent the implicit knowledge within human communication that there is a machine observer present. Hashtags are how humans help to guide machines to behave in the way that they expect.

ryanklee 13y ago
Except people are now using them in both written and verbal communication when they know for a fact that there's no machine observer. In other words, hashtags are now a functional part of grammar. Sometimes it's for machine consumption. Sometimes it's for human consumption. Sometime's both. As everywhere in language, context determines usage. Edit: Here's an obligatory languagelog post on hashtags... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3671 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3671
- zemo 13y ago
  "Know for a fact that there's no machine observer" Using a hashtag, for a lot of people, isn't a deliberate indicator to effect a specific machine state at present time; it's an indicator that machine action may take place, not that it necessarily will. So, for example, people have been using non-functional hashtags on Facebook for a long time. Why would they do such a thing? They do so because the utility of the hashtag is dependent on the hashtag already being in widespread use. If you use it now, it may become useful later. So it's not about saying "this text is definitely observed" or "this text is definitely not observed", it's about enabling the possibility under observation, either present observation or future observation. Anyway, I think one of the articles linked to in your article (thanks for the link, btw), kinda misses the point: “Sarah Palin for President??!? #Iwouldratherhaveamoose” This usage totally subverts the original purpose of the hashtag, since the likelihood of anyone searching the term “Iwouldratherhaveamoose” is next to zero. I would say the likelihood of anyone searching the term #Iwouldratherhaveamoose is not next to zero; it's probably closer to one. Firstly, the speaker. The speaker may have no prior knowledge of the hashtag, but having thought of it, knows that someone else had thought of it. After sending that tweet, what are the odds that the speaker's very next action will be to search #Iwouldratherhaveamoose, to see who else had thought of that tag and what they were doing. Secondly, the (human) audience. Part of this is to encourage someone else to make a new statement ending in #Iwouldratherhaveamoose; so the original speaker is incentivized to search this term sometime again in the future to see if their action has spawned a reaction.
  - ryanklee 13y ago
    You're discounting verbal usage, which doesn't admit of any machine readability considerations.
  - rmc 13y ago
    I wonder: The "#Iwouldratherhaveamoose" example shows hashtags being used not to indicate a topic, but as a more advanced form of emoticons, i.e. to indicate the tone of the 'speaker'. "☹" or ":(" gives the general tone, but it's not precise enough.
rmc 13y ago
That's a bit dystopic, implying for the first time that humans are aware of their new machine masters. But all languages, incl. English, has changed. English no longer has nominative/dative grammatical case markers (instead relying on word position), this can make spell checkers easier (since there are less permutations of words), does that mean humans did it for our machine masters? No because it happened hundreds of years ago.
- zemo 13y ago
  "Machine masters" is a bit strong, IMHO. Hashtag use is strictly opt-in. Using a hashtag isn't about machines having power over humans, or humans having power over machines; it is about the harmony of human and machine language. It's a structure that bridges the divide, opening up the possibility of more fruitful communication between man and machine. I wouldn't say it's dystopic much in the same reason that I wouldn't say it's utopic; the existence of such structures is without virtue, because virtue is a byproduct of intent, and only the speaker can decide the intent of a hashtag (or the observer and the intent of the observation), not the hashtag itself. One could use hashtags for good or for evil, but it is not the hashtag itself that decides which is which. As to the classification of the referent case, I don't have quite enough linguistic knowledge to engage that argument properly, but that's the first time I've heard it put that way.
  - rmc 13y ago
    Or it's a way for humans to communicate better with other humans. For example hashtags are often used in another way, like more verbose emoticons. Someone saying "Canteen out of coffee ☹" is telling you about their canteen and also how they feel about it. In "Canteen out of coffee #fail", the "#fail" hashtag is used like an emoticon here, but you have access to more "emoticon-hashtags" than before. Hashtags in the original sense allowed people on twitter to communicate with strangers about a topic. This is humans talking to humans, not humans talking to machines.

by zemo 13y ago

ryanklee 13y ago

Except people are now using them in both written and verbal communication when they know for a fact that there's no machine observer. In other words, hashtags are now a functional part of grammar. Sometimes it's for machine consumption. Sometimes it's for human consumption. Sometime's both. As everywhere in language, context determines usage. Edit: Here's an obligatory languagelog post on hashtags... http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3671 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3671

zemo 13y ago
"Know for a fact that there's no machine observer" Using a hashtag, for a lot of people, isn't a deliberate indicator to effect a specific machine state at present time; it's an indicator that machine action may take place, not that it necessarily will. So, for example, people have been using non-functional hashtags on Facebook for a long time. Why would they do such a thing? They do so because the utility of the hashtag is dependent on the hashtag already being in widespread use. If you use it now, it may become useful later. So it's not about saying "this text is definitely observed" or "this text is definitely not observed", it's about enabling the possibility under observation, either present observation or future observation. Anyway, I think one of the articles linked to in your article (thanks for the link, btw), kinda misses the point: “Sarah Palin for President??!? #Iwouldratherhaveamoose” This usage totally subverts the original purpose of the hashtag, since the likelihood of anyone searching the term “Iwouldratherhaveamoose” is next to zero. I would say the likelihood of anyone searching the term #Iwouldratherhaveamoose is not next to zero; it's probably closer to one. Firstly, the speaker. The speaker may have no prior knowledge of the hashtag, but having thought of it, knows that someone else had thought of it. After sending that tweet, what are the odds that the speaker's very next action will be to search #Iwouldratherhaveamoose, to see who else had thought of that tag and what they were doing. Secondly, the (human) audience. Part of this is to encourage someone else to make a new statement ending in #Iwouldratherhaveamoose; so the original speaker is incentivized to search this term sometime again in the future to see if their action has spawned a reaction.
- ryanklee 13y ago
  You're discounting verbal usage, which doesn't admit of any machine readability considerations.
- rmc 13y ago
  I wonder: The "#Iwouldratherhaveamoose" example shows hashtags being used not to indicate a topic, but as a more advanced form of emoticons, i.e. to indicate the tone of the 'speaker'. "☹" or ":(" gives the general tone, but it's not precise enough.

rmc 13y ago

That's a bit dystopic, implying for the first time that humans are aware of their new machine masters. But all languages, incl. English, has changed. English no longer has nominative/dative grammatical case markers (instead relying on word position), this can make spell checkers easier (since there are less permutations of words), does that mean humans did it for our machine masters? No because it happened hundreds of years ago.

zemo 13y ago
"Machine masters" is a bit strong, IMHO. Hashtag use is strictly opt-in. Using a hashtag isn't about machines having power over humans, or humans having power over machines; it is about the harmony of human and machine language. It's a structure that bridges the divide, opening up the possibility of more fruitful communication between man and machine. I wouldn't say it's dystopic much in the same reason that I wouldn't say it's utopic; the existence of such structures is without virtue, because virtue is a byproduct of intent, and only the speaker can decide the intent of a hashtag (or the observer and the intent of the observation), not the hashtag itself. One could use hashtags for good or for evil, but it is not the hashtag itself that decides which is which. As to the classification of the referent case, I don't have quite enough linguistic knowledge to engage that argument properly, but that's the first time I've heard it put that way.
- rmc 13y ago
  Or it's a way for humans to communicate better with other humans. For example hashtags are often used in another way, like more verbose emoticons. Someone saying "Canteen out of coffee ☹" is telling you about their canteen and also how they feel about it. In "Canteen out of coffee #fail", the "#fail" hashtag is used like an emoticon here, but you have access to more "emoticon-hashtags" than before. Hashtags in the original sense allowed people on twitter to communicate with strangers about a topic. This is humans talking to humans, not humans talking to machines.