Quite aware that language could be considered a technology--Ong et.
al.--but what Jim did was set up a false analogy of language being a
technology in the same sense as computer hard soft-wear or a burnt stick
of wood. This is quite other: a comparison between two very different
categories of thing. This allowed Jim to side-step the whole issue of
tools:
tools in the old sense of pencils, pens, etc.
and tools in the new sense of microsoft, the Internet, etc. etc.
my contention is that the former do not attempt to manipulate the user in
the manner that almost everything associated with computer technology
increasingly does: primarily economically.
Jim's ringing the changes on language as technology is simply a red
herring that draws us away from the original question and allows him to
give lectures, nice as they are.
Jess
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