Linguistic Cognition

Here I sit, with my half-completed review of Peter Lindert's Growing Public: on the right half of my screen, Growing Public itself--some 2^21 bytes of frozen cognition about the twentieth-century welfare state, its rise and vicissitudes--at my right hand, my iPod with 2^11 songs (almost all of which I know in the sense of recognize, but virtually none of which I could sing reliably--even if I could sing) plugged into my left ear, off further to the left the 2^30 bytes of frozen cognition that are the family room library, and in front of me my laptop screen, processor, 2^36 byte hard disk, and (on the left half of the screen) my connection to the miraculous Interwebs.

All of this extraordinary system exists to amplify my powers to cognate linguistically to produce things others will find informative and useful--in this case, my overdue review of the excellent Growing Public.

Meanwhile, halfway across the continent, Michael Berube and his son Jamie Berube investigate amplifying Jamie Berube's powers to cognate linguistically via "facilitated communication" and the Intellitalk3.