> Diana Slattery wrote:
>
> > My own gut sense is that "conlanging" is an emergent form, a cultural "metaform" (whatever
> > that means, but you get my intent of a step back from a cultural form per se--a cultural
> > form about a cultural form)--perhaps call it an idea springing up spontaneously all over
> > the place that then the generating nodes get to connect because of another major major
> > cultural emergent form: the WWW. So suddenly the links are made and the sparks fly.
> I've thought a lot about whether new paradigms are truly arising in
> human culture,
> as some people have posited. I can recall several science fiction
> novels in
> which people were presumed to have evolved to something more than our
> current
> state, and new ideas, art forms, even new emotions were an expression of
> this.
> I sometimes think that conlanging is one such emerging artform, and that
> the
> pleasure we take in devising conlangs is one of those new emotions.
> Maybe
> we're on the cutting edge of evolution here. It wouldn't seem odd to me
> at all
> that such a development was facilitated by the invention of the
> Internet, which
> is likely a change agent for this new paradigm in a lot of ways.
>
> -- Terry
>
>
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