The New Babel?

[III]

I guess this question could go in another forum since it applies to language and technology, but it's always fun to get the Christian perspective.

How long until computer translation software and the permeation of the internet reach the point where the world becomes "a people of one language"? Obviously there are places where the internet won't reach for years or decades or maybe ever, but in general, are we moving towards a "people of one language" and will it be in our lifetimes?

Just for fun, I've quoted the story of Babel below:

Genesis 11:1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men 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 —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

[BarbJ]

My personal take is that we never will again be "a people of one language" in the fuller sense. We may, through ... internet-speak? become a people speaking one language, but the world of Babel was much smaller and had no pre-existant cultural differences. We also (most of us) have no "king" mind-set, in that his goal becomes our goal.

According to the Bible (my prophecy source), even when the anti-christ rules, people will be fighting him right and left - and I'm not thinking of religion (although there will be that) but of power. We just no longer have the mind-set of acceptance of a king's edicts. Not that we ever did; shoot we rebelled against God. But it was then the traditional practise; now it's not.

[Mr. Fix]

The "One Language" already exists. Mathmatics! The ancient Hebrew language uses the same 'lettering' to represent a 'word' as well as a 'number.'

I'm just using Hebrew as an example, not as an endorsment of the language as being the "chosen" language.

Scientist have already agreed that the 'language of mathmatics' will be the bridge to communicating with an alien race from another world. Computers (the Internet) already break down ALL languages into 'bits' - the zero/one (0/1) language - numbers as words. Eventually, this may be the way we all communicate. Not in the 0/1 format, but using a basic language with words that can double as numbers/mathmatics.

I don't see this happening any time soon, but as we advance further and further into space travel, I see the likelihood as very possible.

I'd say 500 to a 1,000 years from now this could be a likely occurence and I see this happening because of technology like the computer to advance this senario.:Lecture: