Keywords
Language, Communication, Computers, Law, many lights, many perspectives, one absolute objective truth, finding it
Abstract
There is an old story about a drunken man who is looking for an object under a street light. A policeman asks him what he is looking for. "It is my keys", he says. "Did you lose them here?" "No, over there.'" "Why then are you looking for them over here?" "Because I can see here", is the man's reply. The real significance of this story is very different from what it appears. It is not the man who is foolish but the policeman. We can only look for something from where we can see it. The alternative is to burrow like moles in the dark. But how can we find something that is not there? We can't of course, but we can get a perspective of it by following a ray of light as far as it will go. There are many lights and many perspectives, but no one absolute objective truth, or any one way of finding it.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
R. A. Samek, “Language, Communication, Computers and the Law” (1984-1985) 9:2 DLJ 196.
