(Credit: James Geary)
Amidst all the Twittermania, it's good to remember that the short form has a long history: Aphorisms revealed "truisms" long before 140-character tweets became the predominant art form of the short-attention-span-economy. "An aphorism is a novel packed into a single line," said Oleg Vishnepolsky, using an aphorism himself, or as Wikipedia puts it, an aphorism is a "concise statement containing a subjective truth or observation cleverly and pithily written." Unlike tweets, aphorisms are philosophical rather than mundane, but like tweets their beauty lies in their economy: they're accurate while leaving the all-too-literal unsaid.
James Geary is an aphorism expert and writes a wonderful, aphorism-rich blog on the subject: "All Aphorisms, All The Time,"
Here's a recent entry - "On Edge" - one of my favorites:
"The center, we are told, should be our goal, both our starting point and our destination. But the fringes are far more interesting. It is here, on the periphery, where friction produces its most startling effects. It is here where everything rubs together, where boundaries blur, merge, become extended. Consider. From the tips of our tongues to the soles of our feet, we are all edges. The slightest touch sets off tremors, which ripple out in ever widening orbits—reminders that the universe does not revolve around us; we have to go out to meet it."
Geary will be one of many remarkable speakers at TEDGlobal 2009 in Oxford, UK (July 21-24)
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