I don't find camel case interesting in itself, but the evolution and adoption of the technology of written language is intellectually stimulating to me. The ar

I don't find camel case interesting in itself, but the evolution and adoption of the technology of written language is intellectually stimulating to me. The article suggests that written language used to be read aloud - it was a recording of spoken language rather than directly interpretable in itself: monks had to read it aloud to understand it. A bit like an LP (remember Hofstadter's tortoise character who enjoyed LPs by looking at the groove patterns?) And then, it was found that the eye could recognise words directly, without needing to read aloud (or subvocalize), and that this technology became widely adopted over centuries. The article discusses europe - I wonder if it was a localized cultural change; whether the greeks and romans already had this technology or if they needed to "read aloud" (I believe they favoured memorizing epic poetry); and of course whether other areas (especially china) had a similar change at a similar time. There's a tantalizing possibility that it may have been accompanied by biological change, perhaps similar to the bizarre and fascinating concept of "The Bicameral Mind". Or perhaps my intellectually curiosity is reading too much into the article? If so, the article stimulated it. EDIT I was sure the guidelines used to say "intellectually stimulating", but you're right, it's "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I found the article more intellectually provocative than gratifying, so maybe you're right. BTW: I've found my upvotes/downvotes on comments aren't working anymore (I need to refresh to see it). Is HN secretly experimenting with vote privileges (karma threshold over 2183? average over 2.68? membership over 304 days?). Is it a bug? Or have I somehow irritated someone powerful?