In the recent MIT symposium "Brains, Minds and Machines," Chomsky criticized the use of purely statistical methods to understand linguistic behavior. Google's Director of Research, Peter Norvig responds. (via) [more inside]
posted by nangar on May 28, 2011 - 95 comments

Google's new Ngram Viewer lets you track the history of words in six languages, including several flavo(u)rs of English. Whether it's the rise and fall of a single word, the evolution of technology, or the mysterious seventeenth-century proliferation of fart jokes, there's a lot to play with. More at the Official Google Blog.
posted by theodolite on Dec 16, 2010 - 74 comments

42 days to a Googlewash. The Register comes out all guns firing at the blogging community's apparent "redefinition" of a term, calling it Orwellian doublespeak. Is it true that a small coterie of A-list bloggers is able to change the way we (for we: read Google users) define a phrase? Or is there really something bigger going on?
posted by cbrody on Apr 3, 2003 - 65 comments

Out of all the groups of people that annoy the heck out of me (telemarketers, ricers and scientologists to name a few) I still cannot help but crack up when I read something written in 1337 hacker talk. Thank God they don't rule the world.
posted by hidely on Jul 27, 2002 - 14 comments