Tower of Babel, by Marta Minujín
The Book of Genesis relates the story of a time when the whole world shared a same language. With this common language the people of Babel attempted to build a towering system to reach heaven. The account reveals that by divine design, or a mysterious ingrained mechanism, no single earthly power gets away with building a totalitarian system: In biblical terms, of playing God. As soon as an earthly power does, there is a built-in mechanism that sets in motion a dynamic to destabilize any tyrannical endeavor. The story shows that the Lord’s intervention stopped the evil plan. It resulted in the creation of multiple languages and eventually division that lead to growing confusion, protectionism and economic chaos in the world.
The definition of language does not limit itself to human speech, but to any signs or codes used as means of human communication between two or more entities/devices. One example of a global language consists of codes making up the hypertext markup language (html, http, etc) that allows computers and other devices to communicate between each other in order to create the World Wide Web’s interfaces. These codes are subliminal, they are nonetheless a language. Unfortunately, the development of this omnipresent online system has made it possible for global powers to play god, monitor and impose a corporate global doctrine on the people of the planet. A metaphorical Tower of Babel can be represented today as ONE global corporate hierarchy and body trying to impose a ONE world government.
The World’s Unfolding Schism
The Web became the most pervasive communication interface in the world. Unfortunately the WWW has been hijacked by global corporate interests.
I can’t remember who said the following: When the Internet encounters censure it bypasses it. Timing is everything. And necessity is the mother of invention.
What civilization needs to safeguard human cultural heritage is a parallel Internet hypertext language in order to bypass the current global corporate control of the WWW.
Keep in mind that a corporation is defined as an artificial person. It is not endowed with human reproductive or regenerative capabilities.
And because life is cyclical, the Web may have reached a climax in terms of its beneficial contribution to human civilization. Hence, the need for an open-source hypertext markup language to promote human cultural heritage and bypass corporate control.
What we need to do is reinvent the Net. We have to rethink the Net.
Tim Pritlove
PS: The image above represents a work of art by Marta Minujín, appropriately entitled Tower of Babel. The structure stands seven stories high. It is located in Plaza San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina. The piece of art is made of a collection of 30,000 books written in different languages donated from 50 countries.
