The more important the technology, the more ruthlessly and brutally it will be mocked. It helps if the technology was, itself, a bit flawed when new. But even when a piece of tech is well received ...
When Amazon and Barnes & Noble announced that they would soon allow e-books (and free e-book sharing) on computers and mobile devices, it sent me into a quixotic tizzy about the future of e-readers.
The idea that we have brains hardwired with a mental template for learning grammar—famously espoused by Noam Chomsky of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—has dominated linguistics for almost ...