As if the U.N. does not have enough going on with conflict all over the world, especially in Iraq, Afganistan, Middle East and the Sudan, however they can find the time for an "Internet Conference". Furthermore, key issues include the English language having an unfair monopoly on the Internet - which is top billing.Im all for improving the power of the Internet and making it as accessible to as many people as possible, but surely the U.N. is wrong organisation to make this happen? What do you think?
Check out this article for full details of the conference: http://news.com.com/At+U.N.+Internet+summit,+calls+for+change/2009-1028_3-6131408.html?tag=nefd.lede
3 comments:
The delegate at the Internet Conference from Finland might agree with the comments about the English language having an unfair monopoly. They're currently doing their bit to promote a different language on the Web - Latin!
http://disruptiveinfluences.blogspot.com/2006/11/could-latin-become-1-web-language.html
And, yes, I agree there are better things for the UN to be spending their time on...
John. Like your style - leaving an article address to your blog on ours. I hoping this doesn't increase your sites traffic from all our visitors!!
However, I have to say Latin is madness - trust the Finns. This people need more work to fill their time.
I rate Melvyn Bragg's book 'The Adventure of English' which establishes pretty well that one of the reasons this little language has thrived is because it has been unregulated. I think that it is now so powerful that it will just infect and transform any other language put in its path. So, let's just imagine that Finnish was adopted and enforced as a second internet language, after a number of years (let's say 10), that Finnish language would have become an English/Finnish hybrid, infecting the official Finnish of the exterior world. This would matter to Finnish as it would be corrupted. However, it would not matter that English was similary affected, as it is unregulated. It would just have moved on.
The ultimate in open source?
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