From: Toto <toto@sk.sympatico.ca>
Date: Fri, 31 Jan 1997 18:02:17 -0800 (PST)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Fwd:[Yet another -onics..]
Message-ID: <199702010202.SAA29766@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Mike Denney wrote:
> 
> ----- Begin Included Message -----
> 
> >From sysgu-1@PaloAlto01.pop.internex.net Thu Jan 30 14:31 PST 1997
> Subject: Fwd:[Yet another -onics..]
> To: "Sonni Zambino" <sonni@dentistat.com>, "Mike Denney" <gomez@BASISinc.com>,
>         "Jim Staudenheimer" <JnCStaud@aol.com>
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> 
> *****************************
> "GEEKONICS" IS JUST A BEGINNING
> by John Woestendiek
> Philadelphia Inquirer
> Wed., January 8, 1997
> *****************************
> 
> NEWS BULLETIN: Saying it will improve the education of children who
> have grown up immersed in computer lingo, the school board in San
> Jose, Calif., has officially designated computer English, or
> "Geekonics", as a second language.
> 
> The historic vote on Geekonics - a combination of the word "geek" and
> the word "phonics" - came just weeks after the Oakland school board
> recognized black English, or Ebonics, as a distinct language.
> 
> "This entirely reconfigures our parameters," Milton "Floppy"
> Macintosh, chairman of Geekonics Unlimited, said after the school
> board became the first in the nation to recognize Geekonics.
> "No longer are we preformatted for failure," Macintosh said during a
> celebration that saw many Geekonics backers come dangerously close to
> smiling. "Today, we are rebooting, implementing a program to process
> the data we need to interface with all units of humanity."
> 
> Controversial and widely misunderstood, the Geekonics movement was
> spawned in California's Silicon Valley, where many children have grown
> up in households headed by computer technicians, programmers, engineers
> and scientists who have lost ability to speak plain English and have
> inadvertently passed on their high-tech vernacular to their children.
> 
> HELPING THE TRANSITION
> 
> While schools will not teach the language, increased teacher awareness
> of Geekonics, proponents say, will help children make the transition
> to standard English. Those students, in turn, could possibly help
> their parents learn to speak in a manner that would lead listeners to
> believe that they have actual blood coursing through their veins.
> 
> "Bit by bit, byte by byte, with the proper system development, with
> nonpreemptive multitasking, I see no reason why we can't download the
> data we need to modulate our oral output," Macintosh said. The
> designation of Ebonics and Geekonics as languages reflects a growing
> awareness of our nation's lingual diversity, experts say. Other groups
> pushing for their own languages and/or vernaculars to be declared
> official viewed the Geekonics vote as a step in the right direction.
> 
> "This is just, like, OK, you know, the most totally kewl thing, like,
> ever," said Jennifer Notat-Albright, chairwoman of the Committee for
> the Advancement of Valleyonics, headquartered in Southern California.
> "I mean, like, you know?" she added.
> 
> THEY'RE HAPPY IN DIXIE
> 
> Yeee-hah," said Buford "Kudzu" Davis, president of the Dixionics
> Coalition.  "Y'all gotta know I'm as happy as a tick on a sleeping
> bloodhound about this." Spokesmen for several subchapters of Dixionics
> - including Alabonics, Tennesonics and Louisionics - also said they
> approved of the decision. Bill Flack, public information officer for
> the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Bureaucratonics said that his
> organization would not comment on the San Jose vote until it convened
> a summit meeting, studied the impact, assessed the feasibility,
> finalized a report and drafted a comprehensive action plan,
> which, once it clears the appropriate subcommittees and is voted on,
> will be made public to those who submit the proper information-request
> forms.
> 
> Proponents of Ebonics heartily endorsed the designation of Geekonics
> as an official language.
> 
> "I ain't got no problem wif it," said Earl E. Byrd, president of the
> Ebonics Institute. "You ever try talkin' wif wunna dem computer dudes?
> Don't matter if it be a white computer dude or a black computer dude;
> it's like you be talkin' to a robot - RAM, DOS, undelete, MegaHertZ.
> Ain't nobody understands.   But dey keep talkin' anyway. 'Sup wif dat?"
> Those involved in the lingual diversity movement believe that only by
> enacting many different English languages, in addition to all the
> foreign ones practiced here, can we all end up happily speaking the
> same boring one, becoming a nation that is both unified in its
> diversity, and diversified in its unity.  Others say that makes no
> sense at all. In any language.
> 
> ----- End Included Message -----