Is Google the New Babel?

The Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel

According to biblical history, after the great flood, people, all speaking the same language, gathered in a city and decided to build a tall tower, one close to God. God saw this and, to ensure supremacy, jumbled the languages. As a result, communication between the mortals broke down, so did progress on the tower, and people dispersed to various parts of the world, left to fight for territory as well as their own supremacy over each other.

While several religions and cultures have their own version of the story, one fact prevails: billions of people speak thousands of languages. And, up until the end of the twentieth century, most people could live most of their lives speaking only one, and getting away with it.

By the end of the twentieth century, this no longer held true. In the late ’90s Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google, a program initially used to rank various websites. Today, there’s little that Google won’t do. According to Google.com, “you can find information in many different languages, check stock quotes and sports scores, find news headlines and look up the address of your local post office or grocery store. You can also find images, videos, maps, patents and much more.”

Google “UAE National Day” Logo

In other words, because of the power of Google and various succeeding brands and platforms, the world got smaller.  With the globe at one’s fingertips, including websites and apps that instantly translate words and phrases into the desired language of choice and with business people, exchange students and tourists exploring other countries, the barrier of linguistic communication erodes with each ring, text and post. The recent uprising in Egypt was even called “The Twitter Revolution,” referencing the initial tweets that set the action in motion.

Thus, in some great historical metaphor, Google, has, in fact, become the new Babel. If there was ever a centralized location where the collective consciousness of the human mind prevailed, Google is it. Countries such as China and Russia continue to question the legality of the open society, fearfully recognizing, yet still resisting, that antiquated control over populations is simply no longer la mode du jour. Bully behavior just has nowhere to hide in today’s international and transparent playground.

Of course, the irony of this openness isn’t lost. According to the May 16, 2009 article in The New York Times, “A Russian investment firm, Digital Sky Technologies, has invested $200 million in the social networking company Facebook in return for a 1.96 percent stake…” The Russians knowing what 500 million individuals eat, favor and think, on a daily basis, creates tremendous asymmetrical power. Yet no one is still quite sure how that information may be used and if there’s greater harm than good. Still, unless a Facebook user clicks on the most stringent privacy settings, her posts will be released to the internet and easily found via Google.

In a recent Wall Street Journal article titled, “The Mother of All Languages,” writer Guatam Naik opens with, “The world’s 6,000 or so modern languages may have all descended from a single ancestral tongue spoken by early African humans between 50,000 and 70,000 years ago, a new study suggests.” Perhaps, then, the tale of The Tower of Babel is anchored in global history that goes beyond the books of the bible? And, as mankind expanded its population beyond our original birthplace, weather, terrain and survival drove the differences between our exchanges, both visual and verbal.

In one of his most memorable acting monologues, Alec Baldwin, in Malice, states, “You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God.”  Perhaps Google and modern technology are our new attempt at being god-like, to have that sense of supremacy of being all-knowing? Perhaps it’s just one step closer to breaking down old fashioned notions of suppression and control over others? I’m not wise enough answer either. But, today, as Americans debate what our nation’s lingua franca should be, I ask, does it really even matter?

Hold on. I think I’ll Google that.