States have been the greatest facilitators of mass slaughter throughout history. It’s called democide, death by government.

The singularity should assist in decentralizing governance, not putting power into the hands of sociopaths who lust for power.

First, the votes of the the permanent members of the security council (America, China, and Russia if I am not mistaken). For those unfamiliar, these members have the ability to say no to any vote and cancel the proposed law or action. Meaning if one permanent member says no and all others say yes, the vote is a fail. So any truly democratic governance will take a lot of political power. Currently I personally believe the only reason certain members do not voice their concern with this is the loss of support they will incur from permanent members. Take the Israeli-Palestinian conflict many don’t speak up or push for certain actions (arguably could be the case) because of Americas partnership with Israel. I think similar conflicts of interest could severely damage momentum to a global state.

Second, the current economic system I personally will not survive the age of abundance while holding democracy above it. Capitalism is fundamentally based on scarcity and an individuals ability to work in some form for the credits to receive some sort of item whose value is directly determined by its scarcity. In “The Singularity is Near.” I, based on some of the paragraphs and statements, assume that Mr. Kurzweil is in favor of artificial scarcity of intellectual property via enforced copyright and patent laws. I personally am against this notion. I do believe individuals have the right to profit off of there ideas, but the monopolization of whole industries through some of these patents is very possible now that we know theirfull implications. Take for example the transistor, had the inventors at bell labs known the pervasiveness of transistors today, I think they would be extremely rich and powerful men. The patent wars we see today I think are only a very minor matter today compared to when these new technologies will come into play. Whole nation’s survival I think will hinge on these patent laws. Generic drug patents have already lead to continued needless suffering in Africa due to their denial of use in African Governments.

Furthermore, the war between information pirates or proponents of free information(myself included) and the Information Empire, some institutions more cleverly abbreviated (MAFIAA) than others, has already sentenced men and women to incredible sentences with incredible fines, men and women who have merely provided society with free information. Kim Doctom facing 50 years for offering data storage and retrieval, while fanatic murders like Andrew Brevik gets 82 days per life taken amounting to a whopping 21 years in prison. Believe me when I say this will be cake compared to a planet that depends on information scarcity to run its economy.

Thirdly, I believe any form governance will require not a top down method of governance but a bottom up restructuring, perhaps without the need for a president or singular leader. Currently the top down management of a society I personally think interferes with its advancement. California for example, the state I reside in, has massive problems with reallocating money back to its people. My aunt, worked for the school district in my area, our county is San Bernardino probably on of the largest counties you will step foot in. Our tiny district has to compete for educational funds for the entire county, furthermore if we chose to leave this county and create our own we need a majority from the ENTIRE county. Several of the cities have already tried this together, but still our numbers are far too small to defeat the overall population. However even worse yet, the state of California as an arcane method of formalizing the way teachers need to teach. Im fine with a certain mandated curriculum, but the rules they enforce on teachers for teaching methods are absurd. This is exactly the type of micro-managing that I think will inhibit the global states ability to govern.

I think political power from the bottom up is more appropriate.

Take for example if the following were allowed.

First, the governments sectors are established by voters. (Sectors being districts, counties, states, nations, unions, all the way up to global government) Votes for establishment are needed only from those who would be residing in those sectors.
Example:Adding yourself to a state would require everyone in that state and district or county in question to have a majority vote. If leaving, only the members leaving need to vote.

Second, the higher governments would derive their taxes from the already established taxes of the lower government.
Example: San Bernardino would have a 15% tax rate, the state government would have 30% tax on the counties. So LA County may have 25% Tax, and Orange County may have 13% but California would only get 30% from each.

Thirdly, the higher the government, the more specific the roles have to be.
Example:California would be in charge of maintaining highways, counties responsible of county roads, city’s for municipal.

Forth, lower governments vote on the actions of higher governments.
Example:All of the counties within California vote on the state tax rate on them.

Fifth, members of the higher government are voted by peer electees and then by voters from the lowest government.
Example:All lowest governments vote for say 2 representatives each.(Orange county votes for its two, LA its, similar to what is already established) A certain percent of the members will move to the next level of government. They will be nominated by their peers, a minimum required to nominate a peer and you only may nominate one. All voters of California will vote for the state leaders from those nominated.

All of this will be repeated to the highest level of governance. Instead of a micromanaging leader at the top, which will be ever more inefficient in a global state, you will have a democratic government deriving its complete authority from the ground up.

And these are only three, I think if there is a global state, it will only come after any such artilect war happens. The “Artilect War” being the catalyst of unification.

Btw I am totally a cyborgist!!!!!!!10101010100101

It will be something we don’t expect – but a mixture of the amazing and the same old crap.

Don’t underestimate the stupidity of our economic and political systems, and the misinformation of our media systems. (Yes, there’s a ton of info out there but many are focusing on very narrow information streams, which progagandize them that all the others are not to be trusted.)

As for a global language it is also a done deal, India and China are learning English at an incredible rate. Evolution has spoken, the ideological biases and propaganda nonsense has to be dropped. Its time to stop calling it “English” and start calling it Common Terran. You can stand before a speeding train and yell stop, cling to Spanish or whatever for Macho reasons and then be flung into a back water of history and chain your kids to a self imposed gulag. Evolution cant be stopped, either get on board or become extinct.

We are staring into the face of die-off as Kurzweil dreams of an unattainable utopia.

I, like others, was offended by the categorization of the Chinese language as “clumsy” and “stupid”. But it’s then no surprise that the remainder of the argument should fall apart from that point onward. Sloppy thinking leads to sloppy thoughts.

de Garis says, “The Chinese writing system demands the memorization of thousands of symbols compared to an alphabetic system which requires memorizing only 2 dozen.” But why should that matter? What’s the need for memorization in a world as wired as the one he describes? In fact, I would argue exactly the opposite: Technology will enable us to THINK in foreign languages (without having to memorize anything) to uncover the nuances of their, ahem, “stupidity”. If you could read Socrates in Greek and extract his nuances, your knowledge and insight would be profoundly greater than reading the “homogenized” English version that strips it of those nuances. I look forward to reading all the great world thinkers in their native tongues, past, present and future.

Rather than one world government or one world culture, the internet and technology give us greater (and expanding) tools for fractionalizing and individuating. The very notion of government is what will gradually fade into a memory of a primitive era, along with many of the foundational concepts upon which this argument is made. de Garis’ perspective is tainted by his pessimistic and dystopian dreams of the future, warbled together by a narrow and exclusionary worldview that takes only his own perspective into consideration.

First, the author contradicts himself. He argues that democratic states will not go to war, but he also argues that “Globa” will prevail because such states will lose revenue preparing for war. Why, in a completely pacified world, would any nation be constantly preparing for war? Do the United States and Canada spend money preparing for war with each other?

In addition to contradicting himself, the author says things that defy ready observation. He argues that unfettered dissemination of information will result in people educating themselves and lifting themselves out of poverty. All one has to do is look at the effects on Western culture of the public library system, radio, and television to realize this is a ridiculous assertion.

Honestly, I think something like a world government may eventually form—but it will not emanate from any of the processes described here.

Obviously, this article cannot be taken seriously. First, the author contradicts himself. He argues that democratic states will not go to war, but he also argues that “Globa” will prevail because such states will lose revenue preparing for war. Why, in a completely pacified world, would any nation be constantly preparing for war? Do the United States and Canada spend money preparing for war with each other?

In addition to contradicting himself, the author says things that defy ready observation. He argues that the unfettered dissemination of knowledge will result in people educating themselves and lifting themselves out of poverty. All one has to do is look at the effect the free library system, radio, and television have had on Western culture and one will realize this is a ridiculous assertion.

This article is really just a Marxist utopian fantasy without all the esoteric verbiage and the façade of an intellectual treatise. Every aspect of it, from the elitist multicultural condescension toward patriotism to the meddlesome community organizing toward sedition and insurrection has been tried before. This is a child’s take on standard communism. There is nothing new or interesting here.

A single language?? First of all, we are getting now instant translation systems. They are not very accurate yet, but they will progress too at the rate of Moore’s Law (OK, at least at the rate of progress of artificial intelligence). So why would non-English speakers trade off the more refined expressions of their thoughts for the convenience of a common-denominator language (be it English or Chinese) if it’s more convenient to translate original and sophisticated thoughts directly from any language to any other language?

It seems to me that as we enhance our memories, reasoning and learning abilities through biotechnology, we will want to explore and learn more languages and cultures – not less. Wouldn’t you want to understand what Socrates or Confucius were saying in their original language? I would. And when I am enhanced enough, maybe I will (of course by then, I’ll be anxious to first get my brain upgraded to multitasking – there will be too many things to appreciate and enjoy!)

Yawn. Sorry, can we get back to the interesting stuff?

>>And those who still speak languages descended from Latin can still read 2000 year old Latin as well as the Chinese can read 2000 year old Chinese: same characters, different pronunciations. Chinese has no portability advantage for anyone other than speakers of Chinese dialects, except where historical Chinese use retains some fading inertia.<< You need to learn Latin specifically even if you are an European. For Chinese? You learn it once, you learn it all.

Korea's phrasing out Chinese writing is a *very* recent event, and also extremely political. Originally the current Korean writing are just like phonetic symbols. But after WW2, "Chinese writings" were banned from textbooks and school syllabus for more than one generation. To brainwash themselves "we're not Chinese bah bah bah", they forced everything to write in "Korean" (then add a bracket of "Chinese" for proper names and so.)

The so called translation difficulties into Chinese is like complaining OCR being troublesome. "See, the other guys only need to scan and store the document image as-is! Why do you need to put it into OCR and do all the interpretations? So awkward~" Chinese writing is not a record of sound, a language of pronunciation. Chinese writing is a record of meaning, a container of a huge number of "dialects". Were it not so, China would have probably split like Europe long ago.

Oh, nonsense. Chinese writing has no particular advantage over any other writing system (except, to some of us, aesthetic beauty), and has a major weakness relative to alphabetic systems. It won’t be ported anywhere for real use, and it’s barely scalable in China. No language that doesn’t already use it as a legacy of history will start using it seriously (unless forced to by the Chinese, which I don’t expect.) Even the Chinese are so dissatisfied with it that both the Nationalists (with zhuyin) and Communists (with pinyin) experimented with pure phonetics until legacy inertia forced them to settle for radical simplification of characters that the ancients wouldn’t recognize.

Chinese characters are conventionalized sequences of strokes. Words in any alphabetic writing system, like English or Korean Hangul, are just conventionalized sequences of letters. Few Chinese characters these days resemble what they represent. You have to memorize the sequence either way. There is no magical portability of Chinese. Latin letters being so simple, so few, and so familiar worldwide, sequences of Latin letters are far more portable and scalable.

Where your claims are correct at all they apply about as well to Latin in W Europe as to Chinese in E Asia. Both were just the languages of the regional imperial powers and served as regional linguae francae. In both regions, educated people in peripheral cultures had to learn a lot of the imperial language to be able to use its writing system. No Korean or Japanese learning to write centuries ago could do so without simultaneously learning a lot of the Chinese language. What word order would they even write the characters in? And those who still speak languages descended from Latin can still read 2000 year old Latin as well as the Chinese can read 2000 year old Chinese: same characters, different pronunciations. Chinese has no portability advantage for anyone other than speakers of Chinese dialects, except where historical Chinese use retains some fading inertia.

And all non-Chinese cultures that ever used Chinese writing have been reducing its use generation by generation, a process that began long before Westerners arrived (neither Japan nor Korea were ever colonized by the West.) Only the Japanese still rely heavily on Chinese characters, and old timers in Japan complain that youngsters so often use phonetic equivalents instead of “proper” Chinese characters.

The weakness Chinese writing has relative to alphabetic systems is the extreme awkwardness of dealing with terms of non-Chinese origin. Adopting a new word in any other language allows you to just use the sound, spelled phonetically, then you attach the meaning to the new sound sequence. Chinese has to build new words out of building blocks that already have both a sound and a meaning. You sequence the sound you want, but it will have a meaning that is way off, or get the meaning right, but the sound is way off. You then struggle for a compromise. Write Coca-Cola to get the pronunciation as close as possible, and the characters say, “bite the wax tadpole” (actual example), or mess up the pronunciation to get a more pleasant (yet still odd to Chinese) “pleasantly mouthable”, which they settled on.

This awkwardness isn’t “stupid”, it’s just the legacy of historical accidents, like English spelling or aspects of human anatomy. It is, however, so uniquely ill-suited to dealing with foreign words that the writing system will never spread globally, EXCEPT as a way for non-Chinese to write real Chinese (and, in a very different form, Japanese).

You set up the accurate premise that we will have mastery over a vast quantity if information, compute at the molecular level, and likely prefer to engage the virtual data scape.

Navigating the Chinese language will be a trivial endeavor. With such massive computing capability, barriers of language will fall away, just like any other perceptual/computational challenge. It just won’t matter. How can you propose that something that is only 2000x harder to learn will have any effect on our desire to use it, when you propose that our means to learn will be virtually infinite. It is far more likely that the world will shift to some more universal iconography that is image based, than settle on some limiting language, English, Chinese or other.

After that paragraph I tried to connect with the rest of your essay and could not, you lost my attention. You need to be more careful.

Does that sound like something that is anywhere near the realm of possibilities?

If you google “amazon drought” you get links to recent news articles that suggest we may be dangerously close to crossing a tipping point to runaway, catastrophic global climate change. In fact, it might be like the kid in the movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer” says, “You’ve already lost. You just don’t know it.”

In the interests of our personal security, it might make sense to order the millions of people who are currently serving in various national armed forces to be redeployed for such missions as:
* planting trees
* growing food with organic methods that build the soil and sequester carbon
* installing wind farms, solar energy equipment, and other clean renewable forms of energy
* installing and extending global fiber optic and wireless networks so that virtual meetings and virtual tourism can take the place of air travel and other fossil fuel dependent means of transportation
While we are at it, we might want to put an immediate ban on all air travel; just shutdown every airport on the planet.

All of that is a political matter. How will those and proposals for alternative courses of action be decided?

They should be decided on the basis of reason and evidence. In any field of endeavor, there are certain individuals who are most knowledgeable. For example, who are the ten most knowledgeable people in the world in the field of solar thermal and photovoltaic energy? Presentations by these ten people on the practicalities of rapidly ramping up production of electricity through these means should be recorded and published on the open Internet for the examination and consideration by any of the seven billion citizens of planet Earth. The cost per kwh of generating electricity through those technologies could then be compared in a rational way with the cost per kwh of generating electricity through any other means.

Heck. We don’t need to wait until 2015 to begin this process.

It’s interesting, though, that total sales of Android-based smartphones now are greater than sales of iPhones. With the impending release of the tablet-optimized Android 3.0, will we soon see sales of Android-based tablets surpassing the iPad?

It’s interesting because Android is derived from free, open source Linux. Even though Linus Torvald’s role in the Linux community could be described as that of a benevolent dictator, the culture within the Linux development comunity is very different from the culture of authoritarian Apple.

Let us empower ourselves. Ultimately, the culture of the manufacturers of our Internet access devices does not matter as much as what each of us, as individuals, choose to do with these devices. Peace, love, harmony, … and having fun.

That company is clearly authoritarian and totalitarian. It allows growing and profiting.

A democracy can only function well when the citizens act in an informed way. What better way to inform the human population than through Internet access for every citizen of planet Earth? It’s a means for making virtually all of human knowledge (health care, family planning, sustainable farming methods, renewable energy technologies, …) accessible to every person, at any instant, anywhere on the planet.

The impending implementation of Internet access for everyone does not mean we are on the threshold of a utopian period. What it might do for us is enable us to get through a very bumpy period without wrecking our spaceship.

To me, the realization of a global direct democracy might not be expressed as fully through voting by dropping a ballot in a box, as through the choices we make on a daily basis in our unfolding way of life.

@AeaeaActual

1. Although I do believe I have more things in common with other people who have lived in many countries, I still do not look down on ‘mono-culturals’ what so ever. Most multi’s have grown up in middle to upper class homes and been lucky to receive a good education that has allowed them to pursue opportunities abroad. The wealth that has allowed this has to a large extent been created by the lowly paid global poor working in undignified conditions, both in developing and developed countries. And of course these people are largely mono-cultural, as their meagre earnings leave them little chance to provide a good education for themselves or their children, thus largely denying them the wealth and job opportunities that allow people to experience the world. So you better not look down on the people who make your comfortable multicultural lifestyle possible!

2. I have myself lived in China and learned Chinese part time (about 4 hours per day) for about 9 months. Chinese is actually a very clever language – as most words are made up of two characters, the number of characters you need to learn is drastically reduced. The grammar is also much simpler than in any European language. And if you don’t bother to learn handwriting, which is hardly necessary in today’s world, Chinese is a fairly easy language to learn. When you write on a computer or phone, you only need to write the pinyin (alphabetic version) of the character you want to use and then select the correct character from a list. By the time those 9 months were over, I could already read about two thirds of the words in a newspaper article.

In fact, I think Chinese is much easier than German with it’s incredibly complicated and arbitrary grammar.

However, I think this language debate will become somewhat moot in the future as accurate and portable translation software and hardware will make communication without a common language much easier.

3. The whole article completely fails to seriously examine likely future developments that would prevent the establishment of a world culture and world government. Population growth, increased consumption, peak oil, and the droughts, floods, and storms unleashed by global warming, will likely lead to severe food and fresh water shortages and price explosions across the world. Someone on the verge of starvation would most likely follow whoever promises food and water, leading to the probable rise of extreme nationalist, religious, and tribal dictatorships. Under such a condition of fierce struggle for resources, establishment of any world culture or world government would hardly be possible. In fact, we would be lucky if any form of global governance can survive such a crisis.

This situation can only be forestalled if the world rapidly moves to a sustainable development path or creates technologies that are cheap and effective enough to counteract the limits of a natural system in crisis. However, it is obviously not a given that this will happen in time

I also find the idea that regional blocks would merge into larger and larger ones fairly naive. There is an equally likely possibility that they would instead become adversarial, especially under conditions of resource struggles, perhaps culminating in a cold war-like situation if only two blocks are left.

4. A so-called global state could potentially be a good idea. However, there should be very strong checks and balances to prevent it from stifling political, technological, economic, and cultural innovation at best and becoming a totalitarian state at worst.

If we are talking about an exponential rate of change, why are we looking at 2050 for the emergence of a global direct democracy?

We could have practically the entire human population with Internet access by the end of 2014. Considering all of the possible benefits: liberation from ignorance, and totalitarian governments, and the burden of military expenditures, and so on, it seems to be in our best interests to promote the Internet as a tool for global democracy, and enjoy the fruits of this exponential rate of development sooner rather than later.

One suggestion; instead of tacking on a Bill of Rights as the first ten amendments to the Constitution, we should make the Universal Declaration of Human Rights the foundation for the World Constitution.

He is correct to assert that the educated majority will tend to reject worse ideas (and ideologies) in favor of better ideas. Professor de Garis will, I suspect, find that the most thoughtful transhumanists roundly reject his most central theses, in favor of other perspectives.

His concept of global homogeneity is just such a thesis. He is at least partially wrong both in terms of our use of language, as well as in the overall homogeneity of our global culture.

Entire language groups have disappeared from Earth, and continue to do so. A few languages, such as English and Chinese, grow and build with the complexity of the global technium; they are unlikely to drop completely from the human lexicon. I hold the position that intelligence assistance (IA) is likely to advance in tandem with artificial intelligence (AI), and consequently our ability to master and synthesize many languages will override any single tongue; we will choose from each language based upon cultural inertia, upon the advantages and disadvantages of each language, and upon personal preference (we may simply like the sound of one language over another, and this may vary from individual to individual to great effect). Furthermore, if I understand the linguists correctly, variation and the formation of new linguistic memes and jargon is accelerating; most Western languages, at least, are becoming more diverse within themselves, not less (we may outdo Shakespeare yet). So much for linguistic homogeneity.

As far as the broader idea of a globally homogenous culture, I may have to be more anecdotal, at least for now. If I use the concept of the city as a stand-in for de Garis’s single-culture world, we should immediately be able to appreciate some conceptual problems with his thinking. Anyone who has ever lived in a major city (especially in seven different countries) should appreciate that everyone in a city may share a leader, a government, a set of laws, an official language, and a trade region, but a city will invariably offer a plethora of languages, many ways of thinking about society, many types of trade (with new types emerging disruptively all the time), and so forth. Cities, along with trade of goods and ideas, result in diversity, or heterogeneity, not homogeneity. This should be even more so for ultra-intelligent cultures, for consilient groups capable of trading and synthesizing ideas at breathtakingly staggering rates.

So, I certainly disagree with Professor de Garis where it counts. It’s not just his unpalatable style, but the smack of totalitarianism in his vision. The transhumanist community should guard against this kind of thinking; we have an ethical obligation to steer our future elsewhere. I do agree with him on one point: While unfortunately the future is likely never going to be completely violence free, it is likely to be distinctly more peaceful than today. My reasons for saying so have nothing to do with a belief that totalitarian homogeneity (the tyranny of the masses!) will ever happen; my reasons are richer and more complex. That, however, seems like a dialogue for another day.

@AeaeaActual

Your point may be correct but the emotive language and derogatory tone detract attention from the potential validity of your argument. Also, you quote statistics with little or no references, which appear to be wrong.  For example, I believe there are 193 recognised countries in the world – you claim 200, of these you state only China has this language system.  Is this correct? What about Japan or Korea?

Whilst you clearly have first hand knowledge of the language and are passionate about your thesis, I find it difficult to warm to it partly because of the vigour with which you assert it.  Your approach provokes suspicion in the casual reader.  It is not political correctness to adopt accepted norms of professional discourse.  

You may be correct, memorising hundreds of symbols in order to communicate may not become the norm and indeed may only have been maintained in PRC by political force.  On this assumption it may then be reasonable to conclude that with freedom to choose, an individual may voluntarily learn another apparently more simple language.  However this statement contains three vital assumptions that need investigation before the theory is acceptable. 

1.  Political force, not the public’s will has maintained the language
2.  English is indeed simpler.  English, whilst simpler to construct sentences, has nuances and complexities that may make it complicated in other ways. 
3.  People will choose to switch if they have a choice.  The size and growth rate of Chinese on the www may have traversed a tipping point already and it may be simpler to stick with the majority.   

I look forward to the continuing debate. 

Kind regards

Mr. McDermott

But I’m not so sure how I feel about political updates; especially when they are touting the works of rabid totalitarians under the guise of ‘the future.’ Is it your policy to advocate such things? You have avoided it to date expect for one book review but here it is again touting the work and writing of Dr. Hugo de Garis?

What’s up with that?

I think it might be a good debate to ask if freedom is compatible with the future and if it is if that’s best served by a monolithic one world government (which I think would be the death of all technological innovation) or if it would be better served by a loose confederation of states looking to trade and make ‘peace’ pacts. The ‘One World’ model seems incredibly immature, to not take any notice of the last 500 years of political history and to be dull, without imagination. Just a thought.

Not constructive! What does that mean? Not diplomatic? Maybe! But it IS TRUE nevertheless. The Chinese writing system demands the memorization of thousands of symbols compared to an alphabetic system which requires memorizing only 2 dozen. The invention of the alphabet (by Jewish slaves) was one of the greatest in history and has spread all over the world. 200 countries use it, i.e. every country on the planet except China. Why do these countries prefer it? Because an alphabet is so obviously a more intelligent system than a less intelligent (i.e. stupid, clumsy) “symbol per word” system. Mao Zedong in the 1950s wanted to convert China to a romanized writing system (i.e. to a roman alphabet plus tone marks) but 1000s of years of Chinese cultural inertia stood in the way, so he was overruled. Ho Chiminh wanted to do the same for Vietnam and succeeded. Korea did the same several centuries ago. The planet is absolutely NOT going to accept Chinese as the world language due to the stupidity and clumsiness of the Chinese writing system. There is no way of avoiding this conclusion.

Maybe it is not diplomatic towards the Chinese of me to say so, but when diplomatic lies conflict with scientific honesty, the scientist in me strongly prefers the latter. I call a spade a spade. Also, as a 7 country “multi” (i.e. a multi-cultured person, having lived in 7 countries, the 7th being China) I’m able to look at each culture/country Ive lived in with a very “cold eye”. It is typical of multis that they compare and rank the cultures they have lived in and have little patience with “diplomatic” PC-oriented monos (i.e. mono-cultured people who are limited as individuals by the limitations of the mono-culture that programmed them). Multis much prefer the company of other multis rather than monos due to these “mono” limitations. With the rise of a trillion fold faster internet and the creation of a global media (“Glomedia”), international mono-to-mono PC diplomacy will be seen as old fashioned and will be replaced by a vastly more sophisticated, multicultured intellectual honesty and criticality. National cultures will be destroyed and replaced by a vastly superior and attractive global culture that has absorbed the best features of all the world’s monocultures that exist today.

It is obvious that the above commentator and I have different values. He could never be my friend because he doesnt “value my values” and I dont value his. I look down on PC dishonesty as well as on people who have low RQs (reality quotients). Has the commentator ever tried to learn the Chinese writing system? If not, then after a few hours of such study he will probably come to the same conclusion as millions of other western students of the Chinese writing system.

Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis
profhugodegaris@yahoo.com

=======================

If you take a look at some of the more complex Chinese characters, you can see that it is actually made up of smaller, simpler Chinese characters. Although the mental methods needed to effectively use this type of writing are very largely different from English, the Chinese have successfully run a formidable government for a quite a while, indicating that their language provides little or no barriers to their success.

Furthermore, while memory plays a large part in the Chinese writing system, English requires a level of memory commitment that most other languages can’t compete with as English has more words than they do. Without knowing that you’re accessing memory, you can agree that “eight” rhymes with “ate”, but there is no reason the two dozen English characters can add up to this, especially when “height” and “eight” do not rhyme.

If you invest a little time into studying the Chinese language and culture, you will find a richness that unfolds from the full life-cycle use of so alien a language when compared to native English speakers, as I’m sure some native Chinese speakers discover when studying English. Are our differing mental processes based on the language-culture link? What a powerful thing for us to study!

English may be on it’s way to being the global language, but it isn’t because it is convenient, makes sense, or is “better than Chinese”. If we are to move toward a global society we are going to have to proudly accept our global history and neighbors.

It was also disappointing to read the following:
” It will certainly not be Chinese, since the world will utterly reject China’s incredibly clumsy and stupid writing system”

From a non sinophone perspective this may be a much held view but is it really a sensible view. To express it in such a clumsy and inarticulate manor just detracts from what was quite an interesting premise. A small bit of research would show you the variey and richness of the languages that are similar to Chinese. A little further research might have shown you that despite your (and my) ignorance of the language it is a powerful analytic language that depends on sytanx rather than morphology.

I suggest this article is edited to remove what appears to be xenophobic content that adds little to the debate.

Second, I am concerned about precisely how homogeneous this article seems to propose the world will become. It is possible, it is true, that we’ll see people who are fundamentally multi-cultural. We already see these people. What worries me is that the article assumes that interests are not tied to local conditions at all. That is, where you are matters. And this will be the case with or without “vids”–at least for a while.

Will we really want and have a homogeneous culture? Will the ideology of global capitalism devour every other possibility for economic or governmental systems? I mean, its possible but I’m not sure if its really the most desirable. Just like there are lots of ways speaking there are a lot of ways of thinking (it is well known by those who study languages that languages contain within them forms of thought that are not directly translatable). Will these ways of thinking homogenize? I’m not so sure. What you’d get, most likely, is a suppression of those who desire something different, a tyranny of a world majority (in the case of this essay, clearly an English based on–those stupid Chinese…) except that the majorities would be large groups united by the Internet. If they wanted to create their own states outside the ideology of the world-government would they be able to? Or would it be like the American Civil War, which consolidated power away from the states and united America under one ideology (I think it was a good thing in this example–slavery obviously needed to end; I’m not justifying the secession only wondering if a future global polity might treat less horrible political experiments in a similar fashion–the move would be easy to make rhetorically).

I suppose in the end I’m not sure what this essay adds to any sort of conversation about the future except for some names that will probably (hopefully) not stick. Even the Terran/Cyborg/Cosmist distinction doesn’t make much sense: why would there be a difference between Cyborgs and Cosmists? Wouldn’t those building AI want to enhance themselves as much as create AI?