Tower of Babel Revisited

I have long been fascinated with the symbolism of the Tower of Babel, from The Bible. As a citizen, as a father, as an English teacher this tower permeates my world.



In the technological world, The Tower of Babel is ubiquitous as seen in an article titled, "The Babble of Computer Languages." We have Linux and then two basic types of computers, the Mac and the PC. Each has a separate and unique operating system and language. Programs that run on both platforms, have different key strokes to perform basic functions like copy and paste. When it comes to software we have many word processing tools and Internet browsers. In my life now I have 16 Dells and 16 IMacs in my classroom as well as a collection of PC and Mac laptops. At home I have a laptop of each. With all these differences the result is that a user communicates with another user.


What I find ironic about this dilemma is that people around the world are communicating better than man ever did without this technology. In my classroom, scholars change the language of their computer to their mother tongue or any other language the the default English. The pages still appear and now in another language then the one in which it was written. Suddenly I am communicating with many other scholars in another language then English, WOW! So let me understand this. I can continue to write my pages in English and scholars who wish to view with it another language can. In time perhaps that translator tool I saw on Star Trek is already with us in the form of our current technology.


Go to the dashboard of Blogger and play around with the Language tool and change it and have fun.