Thursday, May 8, 2003

Nick pointed out recent work by Ylva Hård af Segerstad as part of her Ph.D. thesis. The concluding chapter and an abstract are online and talk about the nature of adaption of written language to computer mediated communication. From the abstract The dissertation comprises studies of four  modes of computer-mediated communication (CMC): Email, Web Chat, Instant Messaging, and SMS I am interested in finding out how people use written language, and adapt it to suit the constraints and affordances of different modes of CMC. We can observe graphic and syntactical strategies to either benefit from the written mode and the electronic transmission, or to over come the constraints - or both! This makes me interested in differences and similarities between speech and writing in general, and of medium and situational factors influencing how messages are formed and what people write about. Human linguistic ability and adaptability are definitely shown in this adaptation and development of written language! The full thesis should be interesting. 7:46:43 AM     Roboflies from Berkeley. 7:00:21 AM     A recent summit on broadband (mostly in the US) had some interesting presentations. Most of this is very high level and without depth, but it is interesting nonetheless. __ In the meantime Comcast has made comments on the potential for a DSL/Cablemodem price war ... they believe the services aren't directly comparable. This is a complex issue -- some consumers will find Comcast better than DSL, some will find them roughly the same and some will prefer DSL (several people I know in Comcast's NJ area strongly prefer Verizon DSL -- mostly for reliablity. I assume they won't be complaining about lower costs). My own view is that some of the cable companies are over-investing in video on demand. Some of them don't seem to have a firm understanding of how people use broadband Internet services. There may be a bit of financial pain down the road. 6:24:50 AM     To call the recent supercell/tornado activity in the MidWest explosive would be an understatement. Fortunately few of the tornados were huge (the largest were only F3) - unfortunately there were many of them. 6:13:45 AM     I haven't been a big fan of audio blogging (perhaps it would be more interesting if they were downloaded to my iPod for my daily walks), but this NPR audio blog is much more interesting than most. 6:12:33 AM     On June 3 Amina Lawal is to be killed by stoning. The Nigerian Supreme Court has upheld the ruling brought on her under Muslim Sharia Law. It seems she had a baby as the product of an affair - the baby was seized as evidence against her. A Spanish Amnesty International site has a petition if you feel this is brutal. Everything is in Spanish, but you can probably figure it out (go to a translation site if necessary). That's it -- I'm too sickened to surf anymore this morning. 6:12:15 AM

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