Hia Philologos, I guess I must not have worded what I meant clearly enough.I'll post these few snippets (well, it looked like a 'few' to me :), to maybe - I hope, give a clearer picture of how I related all of this 'one language' stuff to Y2k, and the topic.Thanks brother.Y2K- Worldwide Lesson in CooperationKoskinen of the U.S. pledged to keep the effort going through the United Nations saying, "we will make a great mistake if we don’t build on lessons learned." I think that reaction reveals the lasting lesson of the Y2K issue as an unprecedented example of cooperation. The Y2K "bug" was many things – expensive, annoying, misunderstood and over-hyped – but it brought industries, governments and professions together in new ways and reminded all of us that we are well on the way to a globally wired future.Cooperation also is made easier when people speak the same language. From a technical standpoint, Y2K encouraged a more common language and common standards for technology. Some critics say it was the lack of standards in the programming field that caused the problem in the first place, or at least made it worse. Many of the repairs brought hardware and software into alignment with more standard programming. Going forward, with systems becoming more interdependent, there will be more compulsion for all information technology practitioners to work with common standards, no matter their country, industry or government. The Y2K experience is not the only factor compelling that cooperation, but it clearly jump-started the organizations and relationships that can guide the process.I think Y2K was unique in the type and global scale of cooperation it inspired. More exciting is that the "bug" was not alone in creating this cooperation. It simply provided a dramatic reminder that we are bound together technologically and economically more than ever. Now reminded – and having learned from our Y2K experience – we are likely to continue a more cooperative pattern. In a technological age, traditional boundaries of nation, language, culture, practice and industry could be overmatched by the benefits of cooperation.Peter J. Guffin is Co-Chair of the Governor’s Y2K Readiness Task Force and served as Y2K Project Executive for UNUMProvident Corporation. http://www.state.me.us/newsletter/backissues/Feb2000/y2k__lesson_in_cooperation.htmEnglish: A Global Language? by Jeff Leiper '1998' Jeff Leiper is a reporter for Silicon Valley NORTH, an Ottawa-based trade paper that covers the information technology community. The first computers were American; the Internet is a creation of the American military-industrial complex. The arrival of graphical user interfaces eliminates some of the language barriers to using computers, but consider the early days of personal computing. Applications were written in FORTRAN and COBOL, programming languages that used English words as base commands. Users of the first Apples, Commodores, and IBM personal computers were expected to type commands like RUN, PRINT, OPEN, LOAD, and the list goes on, to perform basic tasks. The language of computing remains English. Peralta points out that "French-speaking people have to make quite an effort to say logiciel instead of program." Professor Anthea Fraser Gupta of the school of English at the University of Leeds says that "speaking" on the Internet is difficult in languages other than English. "The norms of the Internet," she writes, "are established in ASCII texts, and even now texts transmitted unaltered from (for example) Francophone keyboards may produce garbage on English-favouring keyboards. ... Most documents in languages other than English, including those in countries where English is little used internally are mirrored by English translations (e.g., the pages of the French Ministry of Culture)."The English nature of the Internet is apparent. The most basic presence to which most Netizens are entitled is the Web page. You can use expensive software to create an HTML document, but the basic tags still read . In a global economy that relies on the engine of computerized telecommunications to confer advantage, the edge held by English speakers is obvious.A phenomenal 80% of the information stored electronically around the world is in English. The second-largest export of the United States is cultural products. Hollywood consistently produces over 80% of the world's top-grossing films internationally.Globalization, made possible by new forms of transport and information processing, may explain the need for a common tool for communications, but it doesn't explain why the tool is English. The answer may lie in the inherently English nature of the very tool that has created the new possibilities for planetary trade. "Technology," says Peralta matter-of-factly, "has been created in English."Crystal's figures are from 1987, before the fall of the Wall, before the widespread advent of CNN, certainly well before academics and the military lost their grip on the network of nuclear-war-hardened computers that would become the Internet. Yet, over 80% of the world's digital traffic is still in English. The number of students learning English is as high as ever. The question is no longer "Is English the world language?" but more interestingly: "Why?" and "What does it mean?""English is like bread! You need it to get anywhere," he says emphatically, as though the value of the language is as obvious as the need for the pen I'm using to take notes. "English opens up doors," he adds. The majority of pupils in his institute are university students. They study English for the economic opportunities it provides. Many, he says, are young engineers who are unable to complete their courses without using textbooks that are written in English. Even after school, English is de rigeur in the global workplace. http://www.writersblock.ca/fall1998/feature.htmOne Huge Computer '1998' Indeed, to start building that one great computer, only a single essential ingredient is missing: an architecture, a universal language, a set of superprotocols, something - and very possibly today's lexicon can't name it - to hold it all together and let the magic work.http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/6.08/jini.htmlEnglish: from Global Language to Computer Tool?http://theseoultimes.com/ST/?url=/ST/db/read.php?idx=208ENGLISH – THE INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE http://www.sk.com.br/sk-ingl.htmlLanguage and Electronics: The Coming Global Tongue The Economist, '1996' Much of it will be between computers. Already 80% of the information stored in the world's computers is in English. On the Internet, English is dominant, although exactly how dominant is hard to quantify. Mr Crystal has tried searching for a variety of words for one thing--'orchestra', say--in different languages. The research suggests that, for scientific subjects, almost all material on the Internet is in English; in all, the proportion is around 70-80%. But, increasingly, people will have two languages: one for doing the shopping and talking to their friends, the other for communicating with the formal world. That language will be English. As Robert Frank and Philip Cook argue in 'The Winner-Take-All Society', published in 1995 by the Free Press, that will give the English-speaking countries an advantage in attracting and keeping the world's professionals. http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US8/REF/globtong.html
