The heated comment thread on HTMLGIANT that came up when Michael Jacobson’s new book, The Giant’s Fence, was mentioned, raises a great point about how we approach language. Jacobson advocates a form of writing that he calls “asemic writing”—that is, writing with no semantic content. No one stares at a canvas of abstract art expecting to “read” a message. But when a book of asemic writing is presented, some people gripe and blow it off as a gimmick because there is nothing
