Ev Bogue: Augmented Humanity and Dimensional Language
8 Mar
When you’re receiving hundreds of emails a day, you are simply hitting reply and typing as quickly as possible—this is not communication, it’s redistributing dead energy. The same is true for responding to every single comment on your blog.
Ev Bogue is a writer that I am just starting to discover. Someone who has been on my list of people to follow on Twitter for a while, but I never devoted the time to fully engage with his work. He is a writer who writes in a different language than that is more commonly found across the Web and life. Ev Bogue is not the only writer approaching things differently when it comes to how he communicates with the audience, but I would like to focus on him.
Look at Ev’s Twitter stream, and you will pick up on how his use of that media is different than others. His phrase for his style of writing is dimensional language, but I will refer to it as Writing 2.0. Ev describes it as,
kind of like Sanskrit, but instead of facilitating a vibrational transfer it facilitates an intuitive transfer.
I struggle to fully explain this concept because it is a bit further ahead than what I normally read on a daily basis. The best way to describe it would be to break words down to the meanings they contain, the data. “A dog” contains little data compared to “German Shepherd,” for example. “A dog,” is too broad for us to completely visualize and comprehend, whereas, “German Shepherd,” is specific to a point where we all have the same image in our heads. If the concept is misunderstood, it is easier to show a picture of a German Shepherd to explain what we mean than to go through a catalogue of images to describe dog.
Ev uses more colourful language, because it contains more data. The other words of the language are “safe and pedestrian.”
Understanding that point can lead us to a future without email. Communication would happen through Twitter or text messages, because the constraints of the language means we have to choose our words more carefully. We have to choose words that contain more data to get our full points across, rather than trying to fill up space to seem more important.
If you’re receiving emails that are seven paragraphs long, you’re interacting with non-twitter users speaking old english. These people are not fluent in the advanced mental cybernetic languages described in Augmented Humanity and developing now/in the future. It is in their best interest to adopt Twitter now, or be left behind as humanity jumps ahead exponentially.
The problem of breaking away from email right now is that people are so comfortable in using it, and not so comfortable in using Twitter and text messaging. This is all changing, though. Teenagers are much more likely to text message and send messages via Facebook than they will email. Facebook has started to change how their systems work to lead the movement away from email – notice how their input area for a new message is only one line, until you reach the end or hit enter? There is also the option to have “Enter” send the message, and another option to send as a text message instead.
The use of language is changing in a dramatic way.
Ev wants to push language to the edge and keep pushing it forward to distance ourselves from the past ways of language usage. He writes his posts in “English, so that more people can understand it. This is why the post has so many words.”
I have yet to master this new form of writing myself, but I have picked up on how others have begun to change their use of language. Leaving Twitter, text messages, instant chat, etc. aside, I have found that the books I enjoy reading the most are in a different style. The blogs I enjoy reading the most, approach writing in a different manner that has me wanting to explore the concepts further. Here are two names that will be familiar to most, who I mention frequently here, who have started to approach things in a Writing 2.0 way:
Seth Godin
This is will be obvious to anyone that has read any of Seth’s books, and definitely will be if you follow his blog. His posts on his blog are always precise, short, but full of impact. And the big thing is he writes with a clarity that few writers would be able to master themselves. In roughly 300 words, Seth Godin can say what others say in 1500. His books are always quick reads, because the sections of text are broken down into easily consumed chunks that make you hunger for more. There is no glancing ahead to see how many more pages you have to read until the end of the chapter. Read a chunk, set it aside, and take a moment to breath it all in.
Jason Fried
When I sat down to write my review of REWORK, I sat down to write it in a similar fashion as the actual book. I set a fixed limit of 500 words to see if I could express myself properly and effectively without having to write for length. There is a story in the book of how they took the second to last draft of the book and slashed it down in nearly half. That is basically unheard of. Their blog posts are similarly constrained when it comes to communicating a bit of inspiration. They experiment with mainly images to tell the message, or sometimes just a quote. Their approach is like Seth’s in that they want to express ideas in a quick and easy manner, but the ideas are still really well thought out.
The most surprising thing about this movement of Writing 2.0 is that we have been here before – over 2,000 years ago.
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.
That’s a pretty popular quote from The Bible (1 Timothy 6:10). The Bible is full of quotable verses that have a message contained within a few sentences that people have been memorizing and quoting for centuries. It is a lost art, in many ways. How many times have you quoted the words of a book without having to double check the quote or look it up online?
Whether you want to call it dimensional language, or Writing 2.0, it is difficult to ignore that language is shifting in a direction that will be uncomfortable for many people, unless they start shifting with it themselves. People who are fluent with Twitter and text messaging, are on the right path. Those of us who still write lengthy emails frequently, may be left in the dust.
I am planning on implementing some changes in my life online, taking a cue from Ev’s writings. Here is what I plan on doing:
- Shift my email usage down to several times a day to only once (Email is Your Sanctuary)
- Explore and learn dimensional language, and write more focused, shorter posts. (How to be a Professional Writer)
- To connect more with people in person from the Internet (Data Transfers from the Heart)
Three steps to help me initially improve and hope to reach a new dimension with my work. I plan on implementing a lot of this in my business venture to create a more dimensional language business – or to explore if that is even possible.
More on Ev Bogue
He is a complicated man, doing some important work. As always, it is best to explore a person at the primary source:
Ev Bogue’s blog and why he chose a blank slate
His books: Augmented Humanity, Minimalist Business and How to Create a Movement (FREE) [links are affiliate links to help support me and my ventures]
Letter.ly – premium newsletter ($25/month). Also see Why I Use Letter.ly
Ev Bogue’s Edges – Interview done by Gwen Bell – check out Gwen Bell’s book, as well, Digital Warriorship
[image from Ev Bogue's website]
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