TECHNOLOGY: IS IT THE NEW TOWER OF BABEL?

 

Tower of Babel (Hebrew Bābhel, from Assyro-Babylonian bāb-ili,”gate of God”), according to the Old Testament (see Genesis 11:1-9), tower erected on the plain of Shinar in Babylonia by descendants of Noah. The builders intended the tower to reach to heaven; their presumption, however, angered Yahweh, who interrupted construction by causing among them a previously unknown confusion of languages. He then scattered these people, speaking different languages, over the face of the earth.
The story possibly was inspired by the fall of the famous temple-tower of Etemenanki, later restored by King Nabopolassar and his son Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylonia. The Genesis account appears to play on the Babylonian word bāb-ili (“gate of God”) and on the Hebrew words Bābhel (“Babylon”) and bālāl (“to confuse”). The English words babel and babble are derived from the story.
FOR TECHNOLOGY: God made a mistake in his calculations at the Tower of Babel: nowadays everybody speaks the same technology.
Elias Canetti (1905 - 1994)
Bulgarian-born writer.
Esperanto was the creation of L.L. Zamenhof, a Polish Jew and ophthalmologist, who introduced “the international language” in the late 19th century. Zamenhof’s goal was to foster peace and international understanding by introducing an easy and flexible language shared by all. To his credit, Zamenhof did not intend for Esperanto to replace existing languages but to build an international community of speakers of a second universal language. But the idea that uniformity of communication would lead to world peace was utopian and ignored the reality that common language was an elixir of false hope. In English, Esperanto means “one who hopes.” But what Zamenhof was hoping for was a notion not grounded in reality and in human history. 

Throughout history there are many examples of peoples speaking the same language – be it with different accents and dialects – who slaughtered each other with great brutality. The Peloponnesian War that pitted Athens versus Sparta, the 30 Years War that tore apart Germanic lands in a vicious struggle between Protestants and Catholics, and America’s bloodiest war – the Civil War – debunk the idea that shared language is the key to peace. Diverse languages are both a blessing and a curse. While shared language does often unite a society or nation, often it does not. And if the whole world had spoken and written in the identical language, it would have robbed the creativity and diversity that is the core of genius of individual civilizations. Perhaps it could be argued that if humanity spoke one language, history would have been a placid affair without war and strife. Yet, the opposite argument can be made: a monolithic language opens the way for enforced uniformity and totalitarianism.