Got an idea for a transhuman story element.<\/p>\n
Assume that the technology exists to let you acquire fluency in a language of your choice as easily as you install a font on your computer. (Such technology figures in When Gravity Fails<\/a><\/i> and probably bunches of other fiction.)<\/p>\n My idea is a Private Language Generator, which uses some source of true random noise to generate a language — syntax, phonology, morphology, lexicon — from the ground up, and install it using the interface assumed above. When two or more people use the device together, they acquire the ability to communicate ‘naturally’ in a language that no eavesdropper can interpret.<\/p>\n This leads to a new kind of traffic analysis. Any two people who Tweet in the same<\/em> unknown language thereby expose their association. So maybe the PLG is not all that useful for secrecy. But lovers, for example, might use it for fun. (See also The Languages of Pao<\/i><\/a>.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Got an idea for a transhuman story element. Assume that the technology exists to let you acquire fluency in a language of your choice as easily as you install a font on your computer. (Such technology figures in When Gravity … Continue reading