How Language is Changing in the Digital Age
One of the most important technologies human’s invented is language. Without our ability to communicate we’d probably still be swinging about in trees and on the lunch and dinner menu for lots of animals with bigger teeth and claws. And you wouldn’t be reading this. I’m glad you are, you probably are too.
Other technologies such as transportation, writing, the printing press, telegraph, telephone and now of course, the internet, have long influenced the evolution of language. Could we today be on the cusp of finally creating a universal language? Could our future mean one human language and the loss of all other languages? or the preservation of them?
Or, with AI getting better at translation, might an opposite effect occur and language becomes more fractured? Local dialects and urban adaptations such as Sheng in Kenya and Haitian Creole become deeply entrenched? Both of which have thrived in the Digital Age.
Did we Homo Sapiens invent language like we prefer to think? Or did we get it from Neanderthals or another hominid species? There is evidence Neanderthals spoke some form of language, and some speculation that we Homo Sapiens may have taken the idea of fire and tool making from Neanderthals. Interesting theories.
