It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures - it’s inevitable. But unless the spirit of the last year, here and elsewhere in the country and around the globe, unless that continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.

Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours.

There is undoubtedly much to learn about the social uses of language, for communication or for other purposes. But at present there is not much in the way of a theory of sociolinguistics, of social uses of languages, as far as I am aware.

If a child from an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe comes to Boston, is raised in Boston, that child will be indistinguishable in language capacities from my children growing up here, and vice versa.

Technology can also be used so that private individuals will have access to the way centralized decisions are being made.

Markets have built in inefficiencies, serious inefficiencies which are well known.

Independence of mind, enthusiasm, dedication to the field, and willingness to challenge and question and to explore new direction. There are plenty of people like that, but schools tend to discourage those characteristics.