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."Aisha fluttered her fingers."Nothing to forgive.I may be a little prickly on the subject.My first husband was anti-book.""Might one ask, if it is not too personal a question, why?""He believed that anything that hadn't been converted to digital media was worthless.For him, print books were a relic from the period of human barbarism.Now that you mention it, I realize he was more concerned with the packaging than the content.To him, digital books were obviously superior; the embodiment of intelligence and science.You could never prove him wrong, because he refused to read anything that wasn't digital.That sort of rigid adherence to principle became file:///D|/STORAGE/Brighteyes%20FTP/UPLOADS/EB.Larson/The%20Measure%20of%20the%20Universe.htm (32 of 114) [11/11/2007 6:12:21 PM]extremely irritating after a while.""I understand you! Who knows where such a myopic attitude might lead? Please consider me duly chastised.I am sorry to have associated myself with this repugnant philosophy and I applaud you for divorcifying the swine tout de suite!"Aisha scratched her chin."He divorced me, actually.Not that I blamed him, since I was cohabiting with my second-husband-to-be at the time.It distressed him -- my first husband -- that I would do such a thing without bothering with the legal formalities." She cleared her throat."But perhaps your people also feel that the, ah, legal niceties should not be so lightly dismissed.""No indeed.We are.a self-indulgent race.Our laws are few.I will go so far as to say that we have been astonished to find your Earth culture so preoccupied with form and rules.But we try to understand that this is a tortuous stage of development through which you must go.Meaning and expression are the elements that enrich life, and form is merely a tool with which to deliver them where they are most needed.For a time this distinction is blurred; later on in your history, you will allow the stream to take precedence over the channel again.""That's encouraging." She pulled another book from the box, and hefted it in her hand."A bit ungainly, isn't it.You're right, of course.The book is just a stage in an ongoing process.In fact, I admit I only print a few hundred of each of my books, out of respect to my parents, really.Readers find it frustrating not to be able to search or manipulate printed text.Not to mention how irritating it is to discover a typo.In a digital text, you just correct it, but in print, you're stuck with it."Titek seated himself on a box."What is 'typo?'""It could be a mistake in data input that escaped the notice of the proofreader, or a spelling error.""What is 'spelling error,' in this context?""A deviation from the conventional order of letters in a word, resulting from ignorance or accident." Aisha pushed at her hair."Before the printing press, there was no such thing as correct spelling, or spelling errors.Today, people are horrified file:///D|/STORAGE/Brighteyes%20FTP/UPLOADS/EB.Larson/The%20Measure%20of%20the%20Universe.htm (33 of 114) [11/11/2007 6:12:21 PM]by spelling errors, as if spelling mistake could compare with getting your facts wrong.Another example of my species stressing the packaging above the content, I guess.""If a mistake in spelling is a matter of sufficient importance to arouse disapprobation, why do you not, as the Chinese did, adopt a wholly phonetic alphabet, which will naturally reflect speech?""Because we've never found one that works.And I assure you, we've tried.I've tried myself! The problem is, even though we all speak English, we speak it with different accents around the world -- different phonemic systems, I should say.But you talk as if." She fingered the book in her hands."Have your people developed a viable phonemic writing system?""Ahem." He raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips."That introduces a touching subject.A writing system.it can be considered a tool, can't it? A creation of a society?""Obviously.We do not emerge from the womb with pencils stuck behind our ears.""You cannot know how much it means to me to hear you speak so incontrovertibly."He put his hand on his chest."And yet.can you imagine your life without the pencil; without the written word?""No.Everything would be different -- what I do, what I care about.I would simply not be me.But that doesn't mean I'm not perfectly aware that people lived hearty and happy lives before the written word or the pencil existed.""Then you accept that the cultural invention of writing has influenced the development of your species as much as the biological process of evolution?""Or more so." She handed him the volume she had been holding."Here is my first book.Somewhat idealistic -- I was young.The topic is the effect of a fully developed writing system on social structures and conventions."Titek received the book from her with a ceremonial bow and opened it to the title page.file:///D|/STORAGE/Brighteyes%20FTP/UPLOADS/EB.Larson/The%20Measure%20of%20the%20Universe.htm (34 of 114) [11/11/2007 6:12:21 PM]"So your people have a phonemic writing system?" asked Aisha again.Titek turned a page and smiled
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