An open letter of… Platonic Love for Rada Mihalcea!

Dear Rada,

Armed with the sword of Computer-Augmented Understanding, your powerful Mind is free to gaze at Other Minds with confidence, with a beautiful smile of a Renaissance that is bound to arrive, boundless, free of unnecessary human computation, free of all limitations, free of all kinds of labour that humans need not do anymore, thanks to you, oh Muse!

It is because you harnessed the mechanical aspects of language processing, proving that so many aspects of linguistics are mechanisable; it is because you demonstrated that global communication is possible regardless of language, that I infer the existence of your Feminine Wisdom, to become conscious of even more important things, for example… those emotional things you noticed with your camera!

I have become overwhelmingly fascinated with your multi-faceted work, in so many aspects of Computational Linguistics, Statistical NLP, machine learning, etc. I have downloaded your research papers and your open source software. I also had the pleasure of browsing your site, discovering many beautiful pictures of your country and so many other things, indicating beyond doubt that (for you) language is only a means of communication, and -moreover- it is not the only thing; nor the most important thing…

I like the way you eat entire… dictionaries for breakfast; I like the way you cut through each text-corpus, turning coal into diamonds, while automating the whole process, making it possible for machines to do it better than humans; freeing the human spirit for more important things, for the ever-present Light of the World, the Light of your Mind, the Light of all Minds…

It is also your photographs (indicating the beauty of a face full of light) complementing your spirit of feminine wisdom (unifying all aspects of human language) which fascinated me to the point of craziness, e.g. writing to you this letter, on a sunny Greek morning:

«Whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent» -said Wittgenstein. Although words are inherently unable to commune with the spirit, I dedicate to you the «Eternal Bet», a Greek poet’s celebration and dedication to his Muse, translated by a human (me) as follows:

(Odysseus Elytis, «Maria Nefele«, p.122, the last poem in the book)

«THE ETERNAL BET» is…

that one day you shall bite into the New Lemon
liberating vast quantities of Sun from within it

that all the currents of the Seas
suddenly enlightened will demonstrate
that you elevate the Sea to the Ethical Level

that even in your death, you will again be
like Water in the Sun
becoming cold by instinct.

[….]

that all the world’s callousness shall turn to stone
hegemonically on which you shall sit
holding an obedient bird in your palm

that you alone, in the end, will be assigned
(a throne) slowly into the Majesty
of the Dawn and the Sunset

(stereoscopic image of a clay sculpture – use )

(The «Pool of Rebirth», oil painting 50x70cm; click for more)
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