The underlying software
and hardware will become as arcane and mysterious as are the
ASCII and ASSEMBLY languages to the average computer user
today. It will be a real partnership of biological and
artificial intelligence on the move.
The Polyglottal Internet
By: Sam Vaknin
http://www.everymail.com/
The Internet started off as a purely American phenomenon and
seemed to perpetuate the fast-emerging dominance of the
English language. A negligible minority of web sites were in
other languages. Software applications were chauvinistically
ill-prepared (and still are) to deal with anything but
English. And the vast majority of net users were residents of
the two North-American colossi, chiefly the USA.
All this started to change rapidly about two years ago. Early
this year, the number of American users of the Net was
surpassed by the swelling tide of European and Japanese ones.
Non-English web sites are proliferating as well. The advent of
the wireless Internet - more widespread outside the USA - is
likely to strengthen this unmistakable trend.
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