The Kindle Chronicles discussion

I must confess, I did not understand "I see the alphabet as disappearing, the alphabet itself." Or the idea that we're trending towards the use of syllabaries. What is he talking about?

I do think it would be cool to have a language independent writing system (the closest example of this would be that used for Chinese, which also happens to be the most widely adopted system). But by the same token, I think that the more writing systems we have, the richer our cultural endowment.

Excellent show, Len. I found McLuhan's comments insightful, and it will be interesting if his ideas about the alphabet come true. I guess we won't be around to see it happen, though! I wrote about his comments at Critical Margins today: http://criticalmargins.com/2013/07/29...

I agree that some of what Eric said were from very specialized academic study in language. It sent me to the computer to find out what a "syllabary" was. A very intelligent man.

Len congrats on the five years. I have been lucky enough to listen to most of them.

I found his love for the physical photograph and the negative does not match with the reality I live. With digital photography people do not need to worry about fires or disasters in the same way. With flickr I do not need to worry about a tornado blowing my photos all over the area.

Thanks for starting this topic Brett. I will admit to not being able to follow all of Eric's observations, but I loved his creativity and curiosity about the world. He was also a gentle, gracious host.