aemathenge wrote:Muriel wrote:They cannot just be allocating new meanings to words as pleases them disregarding the existing meanings.
Doing that destroys language and renders communication unintelligible.
Granted.
But then again, in my rebuttal, I give you the (in)famous "Peculiar Kenyan Calling Habits" that has since become part of the Kenyan lexicon.
"They" give the resounding success that mpesa has become in bringing the mass man into the monetary-banking mainstream as one of the signs of this "intelligence". Yet only failure has met those that try to replicate it elsewhere.
I want to think that this is an adaptation to new phenomena and not destruction of language as you so eloquently put it.
"Peculiar Kenyan Calling Habits" did not, in my opinion, render communication unintelligible but actually enhanced it in that it defined a new behavior that could only have developed from peculiar usage of a relatively new technology.
How wrong am I?
Mahegoat, I was thinking that 'intelligence' implies 'thinking' or making own independent decisions sometimes not even calculated or anticipated by third parties.
Hence the doing of activities, no matter how complex they are is not thinking - its merely doing what is programmed. It is automation. It is not 'intelligent' hence 'intelligence' does not apply to it. Mpesa is not intelligent. Its an automaton doing only what its handlers want it to do. It does not go a byte beyond.
Brother, that is how and why I think its different from the one offered here.