August 24, 2009
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Error-Code Poetry
I just subscribed to Jamais Cascio’s future-y blog on Fast Company and in the subhed of the Google Reader subscribe page, it said:
The taxonomy view with a depth of 0.
That’s just a bit of exposed CMS-speak, but hmm. It seems resonant somehow.
Hari Seldon, speaking to students across a glowing touch-table covered with flickering blue-green graphs: “But to predict future events, you must apply the taxonomy view.” He swipes his thumb and the graphs rotate.
A student pipes up. Linus, the eager one: “But at what depth, Master Seldon? Three-hundred? Three-thousand?”
“No, no, no.” Seldon smiles. “The depth… is zero.”
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Comments
I like this imagined vignette so much.
Roland Barthes wrote a book called Writing Degree Zero. The degree zero of writing for Barthes is a style that's almost an anti-style, like Camus's The Stranger -- flattened-out prose that achieves its own peculiar resonance, because it's so ordinary.