Month: April 2007
Hard Wordes in Plaine English
Scott McLemee writes about the very first English-language dictionary. “At the risk of being overly present-minded, there’s a sense in which Cawdrey was a pioneer in dealing with the effects of his era’s information explosion. Thanks to the printing press, the English language was undergoing a kind of mutation in the 16th century. New words…
Behind the Spellwall: The Turing Test for Humans to Use the Internet
If you can’t spell, Internet Access Captchas will keep you off the Internet.
We Are A Long Way From High Internet Literacy Rates
Lord of the Flies. “Thousands of people have no idea that responding to a listserve will broadcast your response to all recipients. Repeated ‘But I don’t even smoke!’ messages reveal an apparently deep-seated belief that spam is somehow targeted at individuals rather than carpet-bombed. Each recipient seemed to think that each unsub demand was directed…