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Digital Culture: The Changing Dynamics
‘vain and superstitious habit’ of trying to find sense in books, equating such a
quest with attempting to find meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of the
palm of one’s hand ... They will acknowledge that the inventors of writing
imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but contend that that adoption was
fortuitous, coincidental, and that books in themselves have no meaning. That
argument, as we shall see, is not entirely fallacious.)”
The Internet: a metaphor for the Tower of Babel?
We could say that the same arrogance, the same will for power that the Bible tells us
provoked God when men tried to build a tower that would rise up to meet him, are
naively expressed today in the desire to create unified global communication through
digital technology. According to the myth‚ we owe the birth of 10 000 different
languages to God. In effect‚ to put an end to man’s inordinate pride in aspiring to
reach heaven by building this tower‚ God acted in a way that foreshadowed our
current information society. He did not hurl lightning bolts or unleash other forces of
nature to destroy this defiant tower; instead, he created the diversity of languages.
Unable to communicate among themselves, the men could not coordinate their
building project and deserted the work site. The abandoned tower fell into ruin. This
myth involves the punishment of humankind and we have traditionally interpreted it
as being negative. But we should instead look at it as the birth of cultural and
linguistic diversity, the will of God and a heritage that is as precious and as necessary
as biodiversity.
Aficionados of globalization also take delight in the fact that the Internet is
promoting the spread of English as a universal language of communication. We are
supposedly witnessing an American cyberunification of the world‚ progress for one
and all. In reality‚ while the use of English is growing on the Web‚ it is losing steam.
International Technology and Trade Associates‚ in its State of the Internet 2001 1
pointed out that of the estimated 308 million Netizens‚ only 51.3% use English (less
than half this percentage connect from North America). Of course‚ 78% of Web
pages are still in English, and 95% of them are devoted to e-commerce. But‚ the
report concluded, “as more users come online in Europe and Asia as well as the rest of
the world, the Internet is becoming multicultural, multilingual, and multipolar.” By
2006, Internet development had confirmed this. The expanding array of languages on
the Web has begun to reflect the importance of diverse linguistic groups.
According to UNESCO estimates in 2000, English represented only 65% of
content 2 and this will soon drop below the 50% mark due to the rapid rise of other
1 www.itta.com/internet2001.htm
2 www.globalenvision.org/library/8/1472
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