This time, for once I actually read one of the posts of one of my classmates (the only one that I could find who had uploaded her post before I started writing this one): Irene. I took two main ideas that I'd like to further explore this time: the relation between regular human languages and programming languages (which I had explored in previous blogpost's) and how the novel is relevant for a student of the programming languages course.
To begin with, I think it would be fair to say that one of the key takeaways from Orwell's 1984 is the power and usages of language, and the impact it can have on thought. Before going forward I'd like to state that I do not believe that the novel actually proves anything on it's own because it is just that, a novel, but I see how the thought experiment it proposes leads to observations in the real word that confirm the powerful effects of language.
As Berkes explains, the events in the novel demonstrate several different ways in which language affects thought and how that could be 'weaponized' or used as a mechanism of control if one entity acquires power ove the language another entity uses: to isolate people from reality, to mask event's that would be regarded as wrongdoings, to try to make certain ideas harder if not impossible to think and to een try to affect memories and the perception of the past itself.
In a similar way, given the features and syntax of different programming languages, certain thoughts and concepts are easier to express in some than in others.
To begin with, I think it would be fair to say that one of the key takeaways from Orwell's 1984 is the power and usages of language, and the impact it can have on thought. Before going forward I'd like to state that I do not believe that the novel actually proves anything on it's own because it is just that, a novel, but I see how the thought experiment it proposes leads to observations in the real word that confirm the powerful effects of language.
As Berkes explains, the events in the novel demonstrate several different ways in which language affects thought and how that could be 'weaponized' or used as a mechanism of control if one entity acquires power ove the language another entity uses: to isolate people from reality, to mask event's that would be regarded as wrongdoings, to try to make certain ideas harder if not impossible to think and to een try to affect memories and the perception of the past itself.
In a similar way, given the features and syntax of different programming languages, certain thoughts and concepts are easier to express in some than in others.