I grew up with the idea that you could put a paper note in a bottle and throw it into the ocean, and somebody might find it a thousand miles away.
We talked about that a lot. (Also: grandfather clocks; suits of armour; quicksand; spontaneous human combustion.)
Yes bottles still wash up on the shore in Animal Crossing.
But I have the sense that the concept doesn’t have the same cultural weight that once upon a time it did.
I suppose I could test this?
I could search Google Trends (search volume since 2004, trending down) or Google Ngram Viewer (the phrase in books going up since 1800 then peaking at 2018, but this may be an artefact of how Google collects books)…
But it feels like there would be better ways to do this research, if I had the (a) data, (b) compute, (c) skills, (d) funding. For instance:
- Train a GPT-3-level large language model with data stopping at 2024, 2023, 2022… 1999, 1998, 1997 and so on, annually, as far back as we can go
- Then measure the “weight” of that phrase and semantically highly similar phrases (using embeddings)? Graph it year by year.
And - and I have no idea how do go about this - somehow see how “load bearing” this phrase is as a metaphor in language overall? Surely it is possible to figure out “outlier” concepts in a large language model?
If the concept of a message in a bottle is less resonant now, I can imagine why:
We have email now (a message in a container, but it has an address) and socials (micro-broadcast, who knows where the ideas will end up, but it’s not 1:1). Whatever it was that was resonant about message in bottles, the appearance of these other kinds of messaging will erode its utility in referring to a particular style of communication – we have a rich abundance of metaphors to reach for.
All of that aside:
What is the equivalent semantic niche for a “message in a bottle” today? Where can you leave a message, and a stranger one beach down can find it tomorrow, or TEN YEARS LATER a shoreline on other side of the planet, you have no idea which, if anything? And they’ll get back to you? That combination of anonymity and connection and distance?
I’m specifically looking for something geographic, to narrow it down, as opposed to burying a time capsule which was also similarly A Big Deal a while back - is it still? - but along a different spacetime dimension.
Oh here’s xkcd #3088 - Deposition which coincidentally appeared this week: If I chisel notes onto these rocks and throw them into the sea, they might be incorporated into some shale cliff in the distant future.
Deep time.
Time capsules were similarly A Big Deal years back. A different spacetime dimension. Do people still bury them?
Occasionally you see one of those messages from people working in factories. A selfie on a camera phone from somewhere in Shenzhen.
Or a slip of paper “help I’m trapped in a fortune cookie factory”.
Similar-ish. Deep supply chain.
Somehow I’m reminded of the blog from the early 2000s, Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl, which was hugely popular and there was a raging media obsession to out the anonymous author. (Newspapers are horrible. Like, why even do that? Leave people alone.)
Darren Shrubsole of the blog LinkMachineGo figured it out. But didn’t tell anyone.
What he did instead:
During this time I published a googlewack hidden in my blog - the words “Belle de Jour”, “[name]” and “[alt name]” were published and available in Google’s index on a single page on the internet – my weblog. This “coincidental” collection of links could in no way reveal Belle’s identity. But I wondered if anybody else knew the secret and felt that analysing my web traffic might confirm my strongly-held belief. If someone googled “Belle de Jour” “[name]”, I would see it in the search referrers for LinkMachineGo.
(A “googlewhack” is a search query that returns only a single result.)
I waited five years for somebody to hit that page (I’m patient). Two weeks ago I started getting a couple of search requests a day from an IP address at Associated Newspapers (who publish the Daily Mail) searching for “[name]” and realised that Belle’s pseudonymity might be coming to an end. I contacted Belle via Twitter and let her know what was happening.
Point 1 – Darren is a good person. We hung out a bunch around that time and he never let on. I remember we asked him a lot. He seemed like he knew.
Point 2 – this is the closest thing to a modern message in a bottle I can imagine.
Oh!
A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people (Henrik Karlsson, 2022)
So maybe this is my message in a bottle, right here? If it’s 2035 for you pls do drop me a note.
I grew up with the idea that you could put a paper note in a bottle and throw it into the ocean, and somebody might find it a thousand miles away.
We talked about that a lot. (Also: grandfather clocks; suits of armour; quicksand; spontaneous human combustion.)
Yes bottles still wash up on the shore in Animal Crossing.
But I have the sense that the concept doesn’t have the same cultural weight that once upon a time it did.
I suppose I could test this?
I could search Google Trends (search volume since 2004, trending down) or Google Ngram Viewer (the phrase in books going up since 1800 then peaking at 2018, but this may be an artefact of how Google collects books)…
But it feels like there would be better ways to do this research, if I had the (a) data, (b) compute, (c) skills, (d) funding. For instance:
And - and I have no idea how do go about this - somehow see how “load bearing” this phrase is as a metaphor in language overall? Surely it is possible to figure out “outlier” concepts in a large language model?
If the concept of a message in a bottle is less resonant now, I can imagine why:
We have email now (a message in a container, but it has an address) and socials (micro-broadcast, who knows where the ideas will end up, but it’s not 1:1). Whatever it was that was resonant about message in bottles, the appearance of these other kinds of messaging will erode its utility in referring to a particular style of communication – we have a rich abundance of metaphors to reach for.
All of that aside:
What is the equivalent semantic niche for a “message in a bottle” today? Where can you leave a message, and a stranger one beach down can find it tomorrow, or TEN YEARS LATER a shoreline on other side of the planet, you have no idea which, if anything? And they’ll get back to you? That combination of anonymity and connection and distance?
I’m specifically looking for something geographic, to narrow it down, as opposed to burying a time capsule which was also similarly A Big Deal a while back - is it still? - but along a different spacetime dimension.
Oh here’s xkcd #3088 - Deposition which coincidentally appeared this week:
Deep time.
Time capsules were similarly A Big Deal years back. A different spacetime dimension. Do people still bury them?
Occasionally you see one of those messages from people working in factories. A selfie on a camera phone from somewhere in Shenzhen.
Or a slip of paper “help I’m trapped in a fortune cookie factory”.
Similar-ish. Deep supply chain.
Somehow I’m reminded of the blog from the early 2000s, Belle de Jour: Diary of a London Call Girl, which was hugely popular and there was a raging media obsession to out the anonymous author. (Newspapers are horrible. Like, why even do that? Leave people alone.)
Darren Shrubsole of the blog LinkMachineGo figured it out. But didn’t tell anyone.
What he did instead:
(A “googlewhack” is a search query that returns only a single result.)
Point 1 – Darren is a good person. We hung out a bunch around that time and he never let on. I remember we asked him a lot. He seemed like he knew.
Point 2 – this is the closest thing to a modern message in a bottle I can imagine.
Oh!
A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people (Henrik Karlsson, 2022)
So maybe this is my message in a bottle, right here? If it’s 2035 for you pls do drop me a note.