On the Poetry of Existence, or The Greater Vowel Shift

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by Tyler Rogness

Between the 15th and 18th centuries, the English language went through a furnace. The exact causation is debated, but theories indicate that one way or another, the growing proximity and intermingling of French and English lit a smelting fire beneath it. When things finally cooled down, the language had solidified into new shapes and sounds that have impacted our speech since. Though the ramifications of the Great Vowel Shift have echoed through history, I’m interested here in a yet greater shift in vowels.

In his book The Shallows, Nicholas Carr describes a change in the way we interact with information—and our world in general—marked by the advent of the internet. Instead of a slow synthesis and real digestion of different ideas and connections, we now feast on endless appetizers, bits and pieces of deeper things. Though this tendency toward simplification, control, internalization, and ease has worn many masks throughout history, the point here is that our modern technology is increasingly more encouraging of this behavior. And this couldn’t be truer than in the age of AI and augmented reality.