Tremblaye’s Weblog

I was in the first group which I read scenario one and two about the low-cost network and English displacing other languages.
I thought that it was very interesting that many of the people did not think that the first scenario would not work due to politics and big business. I never really thought that technology would be hinder due to the fact people want to make money off of it. Now looking back it makes sense that if people are giving low cost networks, the corporations are not making as much money. Also the first scenario was being put down because the cost for every person to have a laptop or have the ability to get to a computer is almost impossible. I was thinking about the population in India when reading this scenario. The population is insanely large and very poor as a whole.
The second scenario I thought was a little more interesting than the first. I was more interested because I speak English and I am curious to see if Mandarin or another language takes English’s place as the common second language. As an American, Spanish has become a common language to take due to the fact there is a large number of Spanish speaking immigrants. I feel that English might slowly be replaced as a universal language. The fact that it happened to Latin proves that it can happen. I also agreed with the opinion that many people do not need to communicate with people from different countries that speak a different language. I never need to find out things on the Internet that are not in English. This might be due to the fact that the inventors of the Internet spoke English and most of the Internet is in English. Still I think that most people do not need to converse with people that do not speak their language.
A quote that I thought was very persuading was Jim Warren, founding editor of Dr. Dobbs journal. He said that “its only 15 years.” When I began to think of that my mind started to wander. I thought what was the digital world like fifteen years ago. I do not think the entire digital world will be revolutionized by 2020. I do agree there will obviously be tremendous changes but I do not think there will be a low cost network for everyone.
Another quote that I thought brought insight for me was a quote by Bruce Edmonds, a member of the Centre for Policy Modeling in the United Kingdom. Edmonds said, ” Technology will allow considerable interoperability between languages, making a single language less necessary.” I think was a great point to bring about. The fact that within the next fifteen years translators might advance as well creating dialogue between different languages a lot easier. If this is true than a universal language will become a thing of the past and people can just use their native languages on the Internet.