Editing Talk:2485: Nightmare Code

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As I feared, I got into an Edit Conflict after doing (significantly more than I intended) editing of my own 'starter' explanation. '''Now resolved - thank you for your patience...''' <!-- ...and of course it's still visible in the Talk page history, if you're bothered. And this time I am remembering to sign. --> [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.124|141.101.98.124]] 20:24, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

Central pacific hurricanes (e.g. Iniki) have different naming conventions than Eastern Pacific/Atlantic hurricanes (13 names in a list that doesn't reset at the new year).[[User:Gacktuar|Gacktuar]] ([[User talk:Gacktuar|talk]]) 23:19, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Is the Alphabet gag in the Title Text related to Alphabet, the company that owns Google? [[User:Kev|Kev]] ([[User talk:Kev|talk]]) 17:32, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
:It would be more expected that Alphabet would change their name if Alpha and Beta become associated with nightmare codes. OTOH, many thought that the Corona beer brand would suffer marketing problems during the pandemic, but it wasn't impacted very much. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 20:21, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

@Kev Well, the speaker ''is'' wearing Google Glass. [[User:Lightcaller|Lightcaller]] ([[User talk:Lightcaller|talk]]) 20:22, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

The speaker specifically mentions "'''Earth''' Language" and wears something that might well be some kind of life support. I don't think they are addressing earth-based humans, but rather some more diverse audience that is mostly not from earth. Many of them obviously don't know old earth languages too well. But the usage of the nightmare code seems to have spread beyond earth. Therefore, there's no implication that (earth-based) humans have forgotten the Greek language, the speaker may simply be giving a talk about their culture. -> I think the first paragraph is making wrong assumptions. @Abd are you sure? [[User:Chichak|Chichak]] ([[User talk:Chichak|talk]]) 22:37, 5 July 2021 (UTC)
:Not at all. Feel free to improve it; that's what wikis are for! [[User:Abd|Abd]] ([[User talk:Abd|talk]]) 16:20, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Wait, what? The ''future's'' character sets? ''Our'' character sets (or at least some of them) are known as alphabets! Or have we already forgotten the term "alphabet"?
^[[unsigned]] 

How far off is "the (far) future"? Based on the retro-future styled headwear & relatively minor language drift, I was picturing 20-to-60 years, tops. 

Heck, which objects count as "drones" has already changed ''twice'' the last 20 years, & YouTube still thinks Steam® is related to an ironing press. If we're looking more than 60 years out, I have to assume that "nightmare" could be common parlance for 'great', "scary" means 'informative', "negative" means 'removing', & "die" means equalize. 

It's a joke about language drift, featuring a floaty person referring to ancient "Earth" languages: Sounds like someone teaching a 1st-grade class at Luna L2 circa 2051, ten years after 'the Oopsie'. I really didn't get a feeling of "oh wow ''lots'' of time has passed". I got the impression we were supposed to recognize the elements of the scene so that the grammatic drift stated in the comic would be highlighted as hyperbolic change. 

Hovering & silly headgear are kinda the ''bare minimum'' to represent "the future" unambiguously, these days. The presumption of extraterrestrial habitation is the most futuristic reference I see. I'd be a bit surprised if that took us more than another decade or two, if ever. 

Is this comic really about the ''far'' future, or is part of the joke that language changes faster than our perceptions of what is futuristic? 
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 01:12, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

@ unsigned comment above: This comic is set in an imagined future in which the use of the word "alphabet" to describe a character set has fallen out of favour due to the negative connotations of the Greek root. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.130|108.162.249.130]] 01:17, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

Does Cueball's "did you know" imply that the Greek language has died out entirely? At time of writing, the origin of the alpha/beta/gamma/etc. pseudo-numbering would already be referred to as "Ancient" Greek, but the same alphabet is still very much used to write modern Greek. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.130|108.162.249.130]] 01:17, 6 July 2021 (UTC)

I feel like the explanation is overthinking the comic somewhat - it's a reference to the practice of using Greek letters for hurricanes once the 21 alphabetical names are exhausted (which is happening more often due to anthropogenic climate change) and the "delta variant" of SARS-CoV-2, extended to refer to futuristic disasters like nanobots. The word "alphabet" gaining perceived negative connotations is a result of that - there shouldn't be any cause to bring up ethology or Google's holding company. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.203.39|162.158.203.39]] 01:00, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
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 @ unsigned comment above: This comic is set in an imagined future in which the use of the word "alphabet" to describe a character set has fallen out of favour due to the negative connotations of the Greek root. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.130|108.162.249.130]] 01:17, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
-:Yeah, the imagining of "the (far) future", as argued against by someone I can't be bothered to check if they're one of several <unsigned>s or not, actually seems (fictionally) realistic to me. At least one full generation of Alphabet-gnostics has died out, by time passing as well as disaster, with very little seepage of "grandpa always used to say..." into this generation. If it's so soon after a terrestrial catastrophe, I'm surprised 'the old ways' have vanished as quickly as the Jetsons future has arrived. More likely like the montage behind Fry in Futurama's setup episode, happening to lead to a totally unironic retro-futuristic setting with much discontinuity of knowledge from the past. Even without the full-on Earthwide disaster, there could be the general Spacer-like ignorance (Asimov's pre-Foundation run-up series, long before Earth itself became mythical/lost/damaged in various phases) of our everyday cultural certainties - that even the surface-shunning mass of Earthers were showing signs of succumbing to ('Lije Bailey not knowing more than that text from the US Declaration Of Independence, IIRC, was "some old document", and used it casually without understanding how fanatically important its original context was).
-:And @108.162.249.130 below, yes, I also think that the great transhumance into space has removed or reworked away Greek as a living language, as well as Ancient Greek as a non-niche dead one. We're probably even hearing/reading this lecture through (historically-unaware) Translator Microbes if it's being conducted in Standard Galactic (except for the historic loanwords), or whatever hybrid spacefaring lingua franca has developed and put yet more linguistic space between the words we know well and the mere detritus of phonemes that reflect very little of their origin. (Again, reason to believe a gap of no less than a century, possibly several, to shift the popular mindsets.)
-:But that's just my impression. You ''could'' shoehorn a faster turnaround, with enough tweaks. e.g. Bezos retires to his moonbase to tinker up a load of new Amazon gadgetry (Musk does the same on Mars for a Tesla-esque offshoot), the world goes all retro-techno via consumer pressure, plus capable of initiating the Google Labs nanobot swarming that leaves the gadget-ridden off-worlders now disconnected and disinclined to further the blackened legacy of Alphabet Inc, and after a generation or two of off-world schooling (from what few educators and experts had found themselves able to expound their knowledge) there are... gaps and other somewhat more blurred bits in the near(ish)-future shared memory. Your choice! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.105|162.158.158.105]] 11:14, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 Does Cueball's "did you know" imply that the Greek language has died out entirely? At time of writing, the origin of the alpha/beta/gamma/etc. pseudo-numbering would already be referred to as "Ancient" Greek, but the same alphabet is still very much used to write modern Greek. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.130|108.162.249.130]] 01:17, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
 I feel like the explanation is overthinking the comic somewhat - it's a reference to the practice of using Greek letters for hurricanes once the 21 alphabetical names are exhausted (which is happening more often due to anthropogenic climate change) and the "delta variant" of SARS-CoV-2, extended to refer to futuristic disasters like nanobots. The word "alphabet" gaining perceived negative connotations is a result of that - there shouldn't be any cause to bring up ethology or Google's holding company. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.203.39|162.158.203.39]] 01:00, 9 July 2021 (UTC)