The Best Sentence of the Day

This blog is a cut-up of a dissertation in progress. Each day, I will post my favorite sentence that I have newly scribed. Everything out of context, but suggestive. I hope.

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I'm a game designer, a games researcher, and a future forecaster. I make games that give a damn. I study how games change lives. I spend a lot of my time figuring out how the games we play today shape our real-world future. And so I'm trying to make sure that a game developer wins a Nobel Prize by the year 2032. Learn more here in my bio or get my contact information on my contact page.

Monday, May 22, 2006

Best Sentence #64

I am at some kind of Zen peace today with my dissertation. Having submitted 150 pages, getting ready to submit another 50 pages this week, and feeling like basically all of it is pretty interesting and useful work, I have found a little oasis of dissertation calm.

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To have the two separate classes compete with one another would be to imagine a future in which a user must choose between mobility and networkability; to bridge the classes is to imagine a future in which such a choice is not necessary.

posted by Jane | 2:54 PM

2 Comments:

Blogger italianesco said...

"To have the two separate classes compete with one another would be to imagine a future in which a user must choose between mobility and networkability; to bridge the classes is to imagine a future in which such a choice is not necessary."

I like this "sentence" (well, in most of these "best sentences of the day" there is usually more than one sentence).

This is a good example of parallelism at work. The only little problem I see with it is, of course, lack of context.

Which "two separate classes"?

And WHY
"To have the two separate classes compete with one another WOULD BE to imagine a future...";

whereas

"to bridge the classes IS to imagine a future..."

Obviously, the writer prefers the latter ("to bridge the classes IS..."), because she's using the hypothetical conditional in the former ("To have the two separate classes compete with one another WOULD BE...") but the present indicative ("IS") in the latter. It may be a slight subtle bias, but the choice of verb tense gives it away. A more impartial rendering would use the same verb tense - "would be" or "is" - for both sentences...

Not that I find fault with either approach. The writer is obviously stating a preference..

10:24 PM  
Blogger Jane said...

Oh dear.

I think you have missed the point of this blog.

The point is to take sentences out of context. You my dear are not meant to understand exactly what i mean. These are gestures, intimations.

10:41 PM  

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