In what ways cyber space differs from america The boundlessness of the Internet opens new horizons

1. Cyber space opens up new horizons for us. Breathtaking visas. A new world seems to be emerging before our very eyes. A realm of freedom. Or...?

2. Geospace, within which we live, has been conquered, bought up and sold, and divided. Just like the Old World was in former times. When it was rumoured that there was a New World beyond the seas, countless multitudes of people rushed there thinking that there no one would keep them from spreading their wings and working indefatigably for their own good and the public wealth. Can we say today, looking at the New World, that their hopes were justified?

3. Yes and no. They were realized, but by no means by all. Besides after a period of turbulent chaos, order amazingly reminiscent of that which bound everybody hand and foot in the Old World was established in America. One might think that it was inevitable. Order is hierarchy. Order is inequality. The measure of inequality is not arbitrary. It should not be absurd and all parties to the Covenant should consent to it. And yet, that inequality is legitimate.

4. The realm of equality is a society in a period of transition, or a continuously widening society. In which horizon after horizon, emerges into view. America used to be a limited space. Freedom and equality in it were sustained as long as its frontiers were expanding. While, side by side with the domain of order, there remained a zone of new development. The frontier zone gave refuge to those who had not secured their place in the domain of order (or of law, if you will). The American pioneers kept conquering new frontiers to the west until they reached the Pacific Ocean, which brought their advance to a halt. The reign of the 200 families, of the Time and Newsweek magazines, and of the Federal Reserve and Hollywood set in.

5. But, of course, the frontier tradition is not dead entirely; it has become institutionalized, and America is to this day more free and egalitarian than Europe. Something like that has happened to the Internet, often regarded as a New America, or a New World, or cyber-America or a cyber-New World. But that analogy should be made with other important observations.

6. First of all, the rulers of the Old World did not go to America. More precisely, they did not go to North America. But they did grab Latin America. The difference between the two Americas is well known today. Real America rushed onward whereas the Latin American world is still wallowing in a swamp.

7. But what is taking place in cyber space? Those who found geospace to be too restrictive for them, and also those who run the show there, rushed into cyber space headlong. They would like to retain their domination. We see them strangling the New Economy which is emerging within cyber space beyond their control. This past summer the mass media launched a campaign against the firms forming within cyber space. The fact that they proliferate nonstop even those of them that operate at a loss, has been used against them. When electronic firms started tumbling down on the market that was not only because their accounts were out of order, by the traditional criteria, but also because old businesses began scaring “ordinary” investors out of buying cyber space stocks. It looks like the geopolitical establishment has won the first round.

8. Similar things have been happening in the sphere of the “production” of culture. The cultural elite of geospace is already spreading rumours that the Internet has become a refuge for graphomaniacs and other, high-falutin folks. Allegedly they cannot succeed in geospace, so they hang out their sites in the Internet in the hope of attracting notice.

9. This is demagoguery. It stands to reason that there are plenty of graphomaniacs on the Internet. But they are no less numerous in geospace. Besides, it is they that sit on the shoulders of culture like the proverbial witch on the hapless Khoma. But arguing over who is a graphomaniac and in which space those unlikable characters prevail is senseless and has no prospects. It only diverts us from the essence of the matter.

10. And here we are approaching one more parameter distinguishing cyber space from America. Cyber space is unlimited. Frontiers always remain there. Paraphrasing Marx one can say that so far we have had to change the world. Now we can abandon it and create a new one. Renewal always begins on the periphery. The Center first pressures the periphery and they either subsist parasitically on, or, having learned nothing, perish in the class struggle. Those standing for the new always move into the frontier-periphery.

11. The existence of an indestructible frontier zone fundamentally changes social relations and the possibilities for each of us. The dull and self complacement establishment thinks that those born free go into the frontier zone in the hope of achieving there what they could not (or were not allowed to) achieve under the Establishment. Alas, experience shows that many parts of the periphery are quickly populated by imitators of the Center. A graphic example of this is the Soviet emigrants who, during the twenty years of their existence outside their native country, created nothing but a poor imitation of the New World (no pun intended!) or Literaturnaya Gazeta. But it will not always be so. It does not even occur to the bosses of geospace that someone could leave the realm of law not in order to build something in its likeness outside its boundaries, but for the sake of something different.

12. The frontier periphery enables the individual to exist without permission and in his own way. The frontier periphery in cyber space has two more essential properties. First, it is eternal. Second, as distinct from the frontier periphery in geospace, it permits its inhabitants to find one another and enter into contact and maintain communication. Alliances of loners thus become possible for the first time in history.

13. Economic-wise businesses for which unprofitability is not deadly will always exist in cyber space and in the frontier periphery. They, naturally, also exist in geospace. But in cyber space, the average lifespan of loss making businesses is longer and their proportion within the system is much larger. It is this kind of business that is replacing loss making state production lines and facilities. But it differs from them in that it guarantees innovations and does not preserve archaic structures. While on the cultural plane, cyber space prevents the Establishment from aborting initiatives. So, away with all doubts! Forward, only forward! As Walt Whitman, the great poet of the frontier, said “to the stars and farther on”.

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LANGUAGE AND SCIENCE

1. In the days before oxygen was discovered and before its role in combustion had been explained, fire was considered by the natural scientists to be an element, one of the four (the others were earth, air and water) which made up all things. The ordinary uneducated man was not concerned with such theories, of course. He saw fire as a familiar, important, and necessary phenomenon, and he knew in a practical way how to make it serve him. Its nature, however, was entirely mysterious to him  and to the experts as well, one might say, but at least they had a traditional theory by which they tried to explain it.

2. It is much the same with language today. Everybody uses it, everybody is interested in it, and most people have quite strong opinions about it. But very few people have any understanding of it in the scientific sense, and there is a large body of traditional theory, largely discredited, that is handed down in the schools and is called upon by the ordinary man when he needs guidance in language matter. This is a great pity, because linguistic scientists have made many discoveries in recent years, and the falseness of many popular notions about language has been revealed. But old traditions die hard. There is always a time lag between the announcement of a scientific discovery and its acceptance by the general public. Charles C. Fries likes to point out as an example of this kind of things the fact that George Washington in his final illness was very nearly bled to death in a foolish attempt to cure him, more than a century and a half after the circulation of the blood had been demonstrated and the necessary evidence had presumably been furnished for abandoning the practice of bloodletting altogether.

3. What are some of the general truths about language that linguistic science suggests to us? Let us consider four points only, out of many that could be mentioned.

4. First, speech is not an instinctive thing in human beings, however necessary it may be to their survival or even to their becoming human in the first place. Every infant learns its native language from the people around it in its early years. This means that any normal child can learn any language; heredity has nothing to do with it.

5. Second, the average six-year-old had complete control of the sound system and the basic grammar of his dialect of his native language. This statement usually shocks educators, who think it implies that the child does not need instruction in his native language. They misunderstand its implications and its limitations. Of course, the young child does not know all the vocabulary of his language, nor has he mastered the more complicated rhetorical device available in its literary dialect. But he knows a great deal more than most educators give him credit for knowing. He knows all the basic grammar patterns (even though he may make an occasional mistake in detail, like saying those sheeps or we have took) and there is no sound in the dialect of the language that he speaks that he cannot make himself or discriminate when he hears others make it. This is a tremendous accomplishment.

6. Third, all languages are about equally complex, and no language has ever been found, no matter how primitive the people speaking it, that was any way incomplete or defective in its grammatical structure. This statement is also hard for most people to believe. They insist that primitive peoples must speak primitive languages, and that the prestige languages of the earth must somehow be superior. To the linguist this makes no sense, because he can find no scientific way of demonstrating that one language is more logical, or poetic, or pleasing, than any other. All such judgements are illogical and are based on non-linguistic factors.

7. Finally, linguistic science insists that language and writing are not the same thing, that speech always precedes writing and the latter, important as it is in civilization, is always an imperfect and incomplete record of speech. This idea has tremendous implications in language teaching, and, if more people would accept it, would result, not it downgrading writing as many fear, but in restoring to speech its primary importance in human cultural history.

Text 11

How to Make the Language Stick

G. Turnbull

Can Britain learn from the United States when it comes to teaching foreign languages? A recent HM Inspectors' report said that half the schools visited in the UK as part of a survey had shortcomings in their language lessons.

Some schools were reluctant to give lessons in the foreign language itself and this was found to be a significant factor in the success, or otherwise, of learning the language.

“Pupils' attitudes to speaking the foreign language were strongly influenced by the extent to which their teachers used it during lessons,” the report said. “Their confidence and competence in speaking it were related to the opportunities which they were regularly given to speak it.”

People in business who need to learn to communicate in a foreign language are often directed towards companies specializing in intensive and accelerated learning courses.

One such course, based on well established psychological research, claims that in a 24-day period more than 2,000 words of vocabulary will have been learnt. The course organizers claim this would provide more opportunities to speak the language than the old O-level examination.

Another company claims to be the first to identify and deal with the physical barriers to language learning. The adult human ear lacks the degree of fine tuning necessary to distinguish many of the unfamiliar sounds of a new foreign language correctly and therefore cannot convert them into meaning. The company says the solution is to recondition the students' hearing and, as a consequence, even the least gifted will achieve genuine competence.

A third company claims “you will be able to memorize foreign words in a matter of seconds … and remember them in a way that is unforgettable” through the Magic Language Memory Method devised by magician Paul Daniels.

These methods seem to be far removed from the classroom – at least here in Britain. In the US there is a movement that immerses the student in concentrated learning related to a particular subject or philosophy. Modern languages have not escaped the attention of this movement and these immersion or magnet schools, so called because they are intended to attract children who would otherwise fall behind in their education and to help them to learn special skills, can be seen throughout the US.

Eugene, the 4J School District in the state of Oregon, has had magnet schools since the early 1970s. There are ten of them, including three language schools. One concentrates on Spanish, one on French and another on Japanese. The Japanese school is the newest and has been in operation since 1988. It claims to be the first one of its type in the US. Its name is Yujin Gakuen – yujin means friendly people, gakuen garden of learning.

Children start there at the age of five. On day one they learn to write their names in Japanese. From then the only language used, with few exceptions, is Japanese. The only subject taught in English is English.

No training is given to the children before they begin school and no preparation is required. Through listening and developing in an environment in which thinking and speaking is in Japanese, the children learn the language.

Within months they can listen and react to teachers speaking fluent Japanese. By the age of nine they will have absolute comprehension of native speakers of Japanese and by the age of ten they will be fluent in the language. By 11 or 12 years of age they will be able to read, write and speak Japanese like natives. Their English will be of a similar standard. Children in the Japanese school have not yet finished their programme, but those in other language schools have.

Their success is apparent and is welcomed by the middle and high schools in the area. The demand for places outstrips supply and more schools have introduced a lottery system to admit children. In other cases, parents have been known to queue outside the school all night to secure a place. Children are drawn from all over the district and pupils of all abilities are taken.

Katy Bonamiel, at the age of nine, has almost completed her time at the French immersion school and her parents say the experience has been wonderful.

Her father says: “She is fluent in French and English. Her writing spelling and grammar in French are similar to her English. She currently has 100 per cent comprehension of French native speakers, and although at present her own speaking is a little slower than that of a native speaker, this will have rectified itself by the time she is ten.”

Text 12

ANTHONY IN BLUE ALSATIA

E. Farjeon

Skipping his breakfast paper one day, bewildered, as he always was, by vital facts about Home Rails, Questions in the House, and Three-Piece Suits: facts grasped, as he knew, instantaneously in their full import all over England by different orders of mind from his, through which they slipped as through gauze. Anthony’s roving eye was captured by certain words in a paragraph headed

M o u c h a r d (near the Jura Mountains)

Jura Mountains … Blue smoke … a blue-eyed Alsatian … a Concertina … the Blue Alsatian Express … many miles from nowhere … haymaking damsels in white sunbonnets … hayrakes … laughing at us …

A M i n o r M ys t e r y

Anthony’s eye roved no more. He felt that the gauze, which could not contain the torrent of the world’s activities, might house the butterfly and not brush its bloom. He read the paragraph with attention. It described the breakdown “many miles from nowhere” of the Blue Alsatian Express at the foot of Jura Mountains. It described the blue smoke rising from a heated axle, the engine-driver sprinting along the lines like a madman, soldiers jumping out on the line and playing a concertina, a nervous woman-passenger wondering what had happened; it indicated the plutocratic luxury of the corridor train with its restaurant; it told of the blue mountains and the blue sky, and “the hay-making damsels in white sunbonnets and hay-forks on their shoulders” who “are laughing at us over the hedgerows.”

And then came the paragraph headed “A Minor Mystery” which ended the account of the accident.

“One mystery about the train will never be solved. When it first came to a standstill a quite little man, who looked like a country farmer, packed up his things, climbed out of the train, and deliberately walked away from it without any outward sign of annoyance, hesitation, or distraction, crossing the fields and disappearing into a wood.

Had the breakdown occurred within easy reach of his own home or destination?”

“Oh, no,” said Anthony, answering the journalist, “of course not!”

Why should it? It was most unlikely. And – annoyance? Why should the little man be annoyed? And where was the Mystery, Minor or Major?

Railways — it is their drawback — compel you to travel to somewhere. You, who desire to travel to Anywhere, must take your ticket to Stroud or Stoke, and chance it. The safest plan it to choose some place with a name like Lulworth, Downderry, or Nether Wallop; such places surely cannot go far wrong. But even though they prove to be heaven in its first, second, or third degree, still, there you must go, and nowhere else, — and think of the Seventh Heavens you flash through continually on your way there, Heavens with no names and no stations, Heavens to which no tickets are issued. To whom has it not happen, time and again, on his way to the Seaside, the Moors, or the Highlands, to cry in his heart, at some glimpse of Paradise from the carriage windows: “That is where I really wanted to go, − that is where I would like to get out! That valley of flowers, that cottage in the birch-glade, that buttercup field with the little river and a kingfisher − if only the train would stop!” − But it never does.

Never? Once it did. Anthony laughed aloud at that Minor Mystery in his morning paper. Where was the Mystery? Luck had been with the quiet little man, and he did the only thing there was to do.

… “Why have we stopped?” asked the nervous lady who sat opposite Anthony in the stuffy carriage.

“Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!” a fresh young voice outside.

“Preposterous, preposterous! I shall be late!” snorted a fat millionaire.

“I want my lunch,” puffed his fat wife. “I refuse to go without my lunch!”

Anthony looked out of the window. A hedgerow bowed with blossom, beyond it a meadow in full flower, long flowering grass, threaded with flowering stems, lace-white, chicory-blue flowers, a profusion of flowers shimmering in the long grass. In one part of the meadow the grass lay mowed in swathes, the sweet flowers with it. A party of young peasants in loose white shirts and embroidered jackets and aprons, lay in the grass munching honey-cake and drinking light beer. One tall young fellow, splendid as a god, stood edgeways in the sunlight, his bright scythe shining. A few girls stood and stooped in the long grass, picking the flowers; some wore wreaths of the blue and white flowers, some were laughing under their sunbonnets, some used, some rested on, their rakes, and all were sweet and fresh and frank.

“Oh, why don’t we go on?” moaned the nervous lady. “Oh, what had happened?”

Passengers spoke on all sides. “We are held up!” “We have broken down!” “Bandits! − these dreadful foreign parts!” “The engine is on fire!” “The engine-driver has gone mad!”

“Oh, oh, oh!” moaned the nervous lady in the carriage.

“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed the gay young voices in the air.

“I shall be late, I tell you!” fumed the fat millionaire.

“Are we never going to eat?” puffed his wife.

Beyond the meadows of flowers and haymakers lay the blue mountains, as blue as dreams, as Paradise. Soft dim woods lay between the blue meadow and the slope. At the very edge of the woods, as though it had just stepped out of the trees and set foot on the grass, was a tiny cottage with a balcony. In the fringe of trees meandered little path and a little stream, and some goats. The scent of hay and flowers and aromatic trees filled the carriage.

“La-la-la-la, ti-ti-ti-ti!” A soldier sitting on the rails was singing The Blue Danube to a concertina played by another soldier.

The girls in the meadow began to dance.

“Oh, what is it, what is it?” wailed the nervous lady.

“Food, food!” puffed the fat one.

“How late, how late I shall be!” repeated her husband.

“Keep the doors shut − don’t let them come in!” implored the nervous lady, wringing her hands.

“Ha-ha-ha!” laughed the dancing girls, “ha-ha-ha!”

“Swish!” sang the young god’s scythe.

Anthony got his little bag from the rack and found a gap in the blossoming hedge. In the hayfield, near hidden in flowers, was a crooked footpath. It led over the meadows to the little wood at the foot of the blue mountains. He followed it unhesitatingly. He left behind the dancing laughing flower-gatherers, the young god mowing, the peasant drinking, the soldiers playing, the Blue Alsatian Express containing the millionaire who would be late − for what? For what could one be late? One was in Blue Alsatia. To which there are no tickets.

He entered the little wood and was lost to sight.

At the back of the cottage, barefoot by the little stream, stood a girl of sixteen, a lovely grey-eyed child, feeding her kids from a bundle of hay in her apron, at which they pushed and pulled. She wore a white chemise and a blue embroidered skirt. When the kids were rough she thrust them from her with her brown toes, and laughed like music. On a bench by the cottage stood a pitcher and a wooden bowl.

Her eyes met Anthony’s. She let fall her apron, and the sweet hay tumbled down a full feast for the kids. She went to the bench, filled the bowl with milk, and offered it to Anthony with a bit of honey-cake, her grey eyes smiling. As he drank, she made a simple gesture.

“Stay,” she said.

The blue Alsatian Express went on without him.

Anthony stirred his tea-cup. In the next column was an account of Last Night’s Debate on —

He skipped it.

Text 13