Re:How the Internet is Killing the World's Languages
by mullingitover on Wednesday December 04, 2013 @02:03PM
(#6849250)
Buckminster Fuller's Critical Path puts forward the notion that this is really an allegory for the adoption of the phonetic alphabet. Prior to this, all the different language speakers could communicate with a symbolic system of writing, but once the phonetic alphabet was adopted they were no longer able to communicate in writing without knowing the reader's language.
"""5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel[c]—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth."""