television 2.9 – Slow-scan although Nipkow Disk is also a great choice, and Slow-scan can go to videotelephony as well (I have fond memories of poetry readings in the mid-90s with the Electronic Café in Santa Monica from the basement of a cybercafe in Paris using a PicturePhone mod I and flashing puppets that were stored in the basement…)
videotelephony 3.0 – PicturePhone. While I’m at it, I also remember a really funny 1996 experience with a 5 ISDN lines PictureTel (3 were used for video, and 2 for audio): we were waiting for a call and the lines started blinking. It took about a minute for all five to light up and show the picture of a corporate guy who looks at us, a bit puzzled, and goes: “Sorry, wrong number.” before he hanged up.
I don’t think that’s quite a fit … 2.4 is “writing”, so going with
Some idea of timeline:
2.1
petroglyph
Bhimbetka
~30,000 years ago
2.2
pictogram
La Pasiega
~15,000 years ago
2.3
ideogram
Vinča
~4500 BC
2.4
writing
Cuneiform
~2600 BC
Next up, alphabet is also looking clearly Greek, at 800 BC
By at least the 8th century BCE the Greeks borrowed the Phoenician alphabet and adapted it to their own language, creating in the process the first “true” alphabet, in which vowels were accorded equal status with consonants. According to Greek legends transmitted by Herodotus, the alphabet was brought from Phoenicia to Greece by Cadmos. The letters of the Greek alphabet are the same as those of the Phoenician alphabet, and both alphabets are arranged in the same order.
Sorprendentemente, forum, forest, foreign, forfeit, hors d’oeuvre e thyroid derivano tutti dalla stessa radice: for che significa ‘all’aperto, fuori’.
Il Forum nell’antica Grecia era all’aperto
Una foresta è ovviamente all’esterno
Una persona straniera proviene da fuori i confini del tuo paese
Cedere qualcosa significa perderla a causa di cattiva condotta, ma originariamente forfeit significava la cattiva condotta stessa: qualcosa al di fuori dei limiti del comportamento accettabile
Un hors d’oeuvre è un piccolo spuntino servito al di fuori del pasto normale
E tutti questi derivano dalla radice proto-indoeuropea dhwer, che significa porta (porta → all’aperto). La tua tiroide prende questo nome perché ha una vaga forma di porta… e -oid significa sempre ‘a forma di’, come in umanoide, androide (a forma di uomo) e asteroide (a forma di stella).
