Rape, Swedish-style

[David Morris]

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/dec/08/information-palace/

The word “information” has grown urgent and problematic—a signpost
seen everywhere, freighted with new meaning and import. We hardly need
the lexicographers of the Oxford English Dictionary to tell us that,
but after all, this is what they live for. It is a word, they tell us,
“exhibiting significant linguistic productivity,” a word that “both
reflects and embodies major cultural and technological change,”
therefore a word crying out for their attention. In their latest
quarterly revision, December 2010, just posted, the entry for
“information” is utterly overhauled.

The renovation has turned a cottage into a palace. Information, n.,
now runs 9,400 words, the length of a novella. It is a sort of
masterpiece—an adventure in cultural history. A century ago
“information” did not have much resonance. It was a nothing word. “An
item of training; an instruction.” Now (as people have been saying for
fifty years) we are in the Information Age. Which, by the way, the OED
defines for us in its dry-as-chili-powder prose: “the era in which the
retrieval, management, and transmission of information, esp. by using
computer technology, is a principal (commercial) activity.”


On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 7:37 AM, Otto <ottosell at googlemail.com> wrote:
> "Information. What's wrong with dope and women? Is it any wonder the world's gone insane, with information come to be the only real medium of exchange?" (258)