A smaller world

Our world has become substantially smaller during the past few years. This has become a truism, one of those statements that we just accept. In fact, we`ve accepted that the world is becoming smaller since the Industrial Age and steam trains. Then too, the world was shrinking. Of course, it wasn`t actually becoming smaller but it was getting easier and faster to move through it; the far became the near in the physical, material sense.

Culturally, it has taken our brave new Internet world a few years to start growing up.

In one of those curious twists of history, the dawn of the Industrial Revolution also brought with it the seeds of nationalism, in Europe and elsewhere. As people could travel greater distances more easily, they also realised they had a hard time communicating with each other and understanding the other`s unique culture. The second half of the 19th century saw incomparable advances in technology, but also the roots of nationalism, imperialism and other political and cultural forces that served to divide, not unite.

Culturally, it has taken our brave new Internet world a few years to start growing up. Nobody would claim that our new world has gone beyond its first independent steps - far from it. But there is a fresh wave of cultural understanding and exchange that the Net is bringing about, through natural evolution rather than the forced mechanisms of inter-cultural exchange fostered by governments, twin cities or student exchange programmes.

This is evident, curiously, in language. The very thing that always served as the first identifier and dividing factor between peoples of different origin has now become a global ticket to communication. That the language most commonly used on the Internet happens to be English may be significant but shouldn`t be of primary concern. I have been known to say that I see the Net as solely responsible for reinforcing the need for solid written language skills among those who were previously seen as "lost" to video games and television. The knowledge establishment, at universities and other cultural institutions, has long bemoaned the lost generations.

This is as true for conservative educational organisations in England worrying about the fact that the 18 to 25 year old crowd doesn`t read Shakespeare anymore, as it is for SA school boards fretting about the black students lost to the last decade of Apartheid.

Today, though, there`s a new phenomenon - where young people undergo a natural process of language acquisition, at least in the written sense. Computers in schools and universities today have lost their air of boredom and forbiddingly technical nature, and are increasingly becoming a tool for communication, learning, entertainment and social behaviour. In short, computers with Internet connections are something that people want to use. Learning becomes a no-brainer when language skills are the only thing between you and the world, right here and now.

I`ve met, hung out and worked with an inordinate number of people whose English language skills are extremely high due to their Internet existence. Chat lines with their rapid-fire typed speech requirements, e-mail and newsgroups with their need for exacting and correct expression - these things have made very eloquent handlers of language out of those who would, in real life, at the most pick up a magazine or a television remote control.

The world is shrinking once again, this time due to English and the Internet. The fact that Internet connectivity is becoming readily available, even in developing countries without broadband access (as discussed in a piece for ITWeb a few weeks ago), is contributing to international communication. Communication not between governments (as in the Cold War ethic of determining whether you were friends with someone because your countries were on the same side of the nuclear fence) but between people who couldn`t give a damn where someone is from. I`ve seen some really interesting friendships develop online, despite national or continental division.

In a sense, I think this is a sort of "golden age" of written language skills... never in history has there been more written communication between people all over the world. I, for one, will be sad to see the dusk of narrowband Internet access - as the Internet becomes faster, we`ll write less and watch or talk more; and that`s more of a division because "live" language skills aren`t as easy to acquire or control as written ones.

People are less self-conscious when they type. The Internet, in its text incarnation, is indeed something of a "great equaliser" between people. And it will be sad to see the developed world move into the realm of broadband access, with high network speeds to the home, while most developing countries will remain steeped in what will probably become known as "Internet I".

Then again, the Internet - like any technology that belongs squarely to the realm of popular culture - has marvelously self-adjusting ways. Perhaps I`m being unduly alarmist here. Maybe we haven`t seen the full power of e-mail and the English language yet.