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stanfordsilicon.bsky.social
SILICON @Stanford
@stanfordsilicon.bsky.social
Stanford Initiative on Language Inclusion and Conservation in Old and New Media | Advancing Digitally Disadvantaged Languages @Stanford
@tsmullaney.bsky.social Little taxes here and there (SFO landing fees, ICANN fees) enable people to get things done. This is how ICANN can run weeklong workshops to sort out non-Latin script domains, or curated exhibits at SFO airport. No one's going to argue about .99 surcharge on a plane ticket.
January 19, 2025 at 2:11 AM
Discussion question: Are we preserving language or enabling communication? Are we creating a Tower of Babel? Are we ossifying language through the unchanging nature of Unicode? #FaceInterface
January 19, 2025 at 1:48 AM
@tsmullaney.bsky.social wrapping up #FaceInterface. This is the third iteration of the conference: urge to create "compostable" organizations, whose work can obviate the need for it to exist. Can get drunk on the legacy of it, never really want to fully solve the problem, want people to come back.
January 19, 2025 at 1:35 AM
Reposted by SILICON @Stanford
Related to LoCoS is a preceding and influential pictographic writing system, Blissymbolics: letterformarchive.org/news/blissym... #FaceInterface
January 19, 2025 at 1:24 AM
Reposted by SILICON @Stanford
“Linguistic diversity is not just a technical challenge to be solved; it is a cultural treasure to be cherished” — Dr. Tawfik Jelassi, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Communication and Information #FaceInterface #langsky
January 17, 2025 at 10:58 PM
Reposted by SILICON @Stanford
@tsmullaney.bsky.social at #FaceInterface "Privilege is the ability to move onto cooler problems", in the context of digitally-disadvantaged languages. For English we can worry about VR/AR, color fonts, etc. Most languages still need basic OCR/HTR/NLP. #MultilingualDH
January 19, 2025 at 1:23 AM
Reposted by SILICON @Stanford
Eason Lu passed around a souvenir example of Nüshu script / 3rd day letter (with some embroidery on the cover! #DHmakes #FaceInterface #MultilingualDH
January 19, 2025 at 12:55 AM
Last but not least, SILICON Practitioner Sina Ahmadi on "Dolma-NLP: Developing Language Technologies for Middle Eastern Languages". Middle East is a linguistically complex place, rich diversity of languages. Only a few are officially recognized. Goal is sustainable lang tech community #FaceInterface
January 19, 2025 at 12:59 AM
Reposted by SILICON @Stanford
More on Nüshu from Lisa Huang’s 2021 Letterform Lecture: letterformarchive.org/events/view/...
January 18, 2025 at 11:58 PM
Reposted by SILICON @Stanford
One thing that makes @stanfordsilicon.bsky.social’s #FaceInterface a unique conference: despite hailing from many different disciplines (engineering, design, linguistics), almost everyone here knows by heart the difference between “character” & “glyph”.

(Okay, maybe also the Unicode Conference.)
January 19, 2025 at 12:29 AM
Loïc Marleix: "The rediscovery of the Lovers Communication System". LoCoS is a conlang, international auxiliary language with words, verbs, grammar. "As easy as lovers are understanding each other". Pictoral system. Both meaning and sound. Designed by Yukio Ota. #FaceInterface
January 19, 2025 at 12:35 AM
Anushah Hossain on "ISCII Imperialism: The Legaci of a Devanagari-Centric Character Code". ASCII imperialism: domain name system only supported ASCII until 2003. Hörby --> horby 'fornication village'. Bending of non-English languages to fit the English-centric bias. #FaceInterface
January 19, 2025 at 12:11 AM
Eason Lu on "The Battle of Nüshu, or, how do we encode a performative script?" In 1982, Chinese anthropologists went to Hunan, found a script written, enchanted and embroidered by women only. Given name "Nüshu", "women's script". Lack of primary sources, earliest evidence: silver coin #FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 11:53 PM
Kateryna Korolevtseva, "Ukrainian Cyrillic: Research-Based Typeface Inspired by Cossack Baroque Heritage". How to envision evolution of Ukrainian alphabet, w/o distortions of 1708 reform or influence of russian imperialism. For whom is russian Cyrillic "traditional"? #FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 10:50 PM
John Berry on "Multilingual & multiscript book design". "As a book design, I'm a reader. I care about the page. With a text book, if I've done my job right no one even notices." Considering things like binding and spacing. Multiple languages (not scripts) common in Europe. #FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Marta Bernstein on "Researching Italian Type History". Especially independent researchers, conferences are moments to talk to peers. How do you find materials to work with? We don't talk about it much. "The forgotten hundred years" between 1813 (Bodoni dies) - 1908.
#FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 10:10 PM
Min-Young Kim ending this session with "The problems type face with VR now". Through all the changes in text production, how we read is the same. AR provides a new frontier: immersive 3D spaces that need new typographic approaches. Can't develop AR tech w/o developing typography. #FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Gerui Wang on "Algorithmic Conformity: Why do AI Generated Texts and Images Erode Cultural Diversity?" Diverse brushwork of Monet's painting are reduced to fixated forms in AI-generated paintings. Algorithmic conformity prioritizes regularity and dominant trends over nuance & context. #FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Frida Medrano talking about "The Color Era of Variable Fonts", starting with wood type, which allowed large-scale letters to be used in posters. Use of layered ink to get additional colors. Color printing with woodcuts dates to 15c in Europe. Computers took us back to B&W. #FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 7:37 PM
Neil Patel: "It's 2025, why are we still validating things in ASCII? Things start somewhere and they get stuck and no one things to change them." #FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 7:08 PM
Kourosh Beigpour: Laki community was offended by some of the font / keyboard prototypes. There were examples they didn't like, until I showed them historical proof of use.
Simon: Question of who initiates project.
Neil: Leads come in from everywhere, random contact on LinkedIn. #FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Question: What would you recommend as a strategy for getting a script into Unicode when no examples of the original usage survive?
Simon: That's the default situation for African scripts. Proving use case with examples of use is really hard. Make a script, encourage usage. #FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 6:52 PM
Question: how do you prioritize among all the thousands of digitally disadvantaged languages?
Anshuman: fewer writing systems than languages, could prioritize by how many languages are covered by an unencoded writing system.
Kourosh: The personal connection/relationship is important. #FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 6:44 PM
Simon Charwey: "Digitizing Dangme: Advancing African Language Preservation and Accessibility through Typographic Innovation". SILICON Practitioners Program. Worked w/ director of Bureau of Ghana Languages and local universities, was connected with large network of designers #FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 6:22 PM
Mark Jamra & Neil Patel on "Fonts and Utilities for Sunuwar". Sunuwar Welfare of Society of Nepal was collaborator in fonts/utilities for Sunuwar script. Needed *attractive* font people want to use, keyboard, app, conversion tool, translit. #FaceInterface
January 18, 2025 at 5:55 PM