The Internet: Combating Monolingualism Everywhere

Click on the following paragraph!

Yo pienso que el internet es un recurso fantástico para aprender otras idiomas. También, el internet ayuda communicación entre culturas y países, porque podemos traduzcar cualquier cosa que queremos con un clic. Este hace que la información está más disponible. Antes, cuando no podíamos usar traductores en línea, tuvimos que esperar que una person bilingue pasó mucho tiempo traduzcando cada página en nuestro idioma. Ahora, cada persona tiene el mismo nivel de aceso a información.

As you can see, the grammar of the translator is not perfect, as languages are incredible complex and nuanced. However, could you understand what I wrote? You can see that, although you may not speak Spanish, with the internet, you don't need to have studied a language for years to be able to understand foreign text. ¡Qué fantástico!

The implications of this ability are huge. This means that if a kid in China stumbles across our blog and wants to know what the post below me says, all he has to do is copy it into a translator, and bingo! If I need to decipher a scholarly article in Tagalog on the merits of hydroponic lettuce production for my PLS2 research paper, it's not a problem! This has a huge effect on the world, because people have infinitely more access to information and other cultures than they did before. This completely eradicates the language barriers that our species has faced for the entirety of its existence.

As far as real-life language barriers go, the internet helps in a few ways. What happens if I am speaking to a native Spanish speaker or reading a book in Spanish, and even though I have a good grasp of the language, I don't know the meaning of a word that is critical to understanding the meaning of a sentence? I can pull out my iPhone and type that word into my iTranslate app, and presto. No problemo.

All these abilities, however, still don't invalidate the importance of learning a language. Speaking another language gives you insight into points of views, cultures, and ways of thinking that are unavailable to you in your first language. When traveling or communicating face-to-face with foreigners around you, you have to have at least a basic understanding of their language. Luckily, the internet can help in this regard as well!

The internet has helped me in my endeavor to become bilingual by providing an incredible amount of access to language-learning resources. I can watch YouTube videos of subtitled animes in Spanish to improve my listening skills, or look up an article about why they sometimes use "the" in situations where we don't in English. I have instant access to multiple explanations by native speakers of complex grammar points, and different ways to say a complex phrase. I have also had the pleasure of making friends online with a girl in Mexico City who is studying English, which has been an invaluable resource for me. This gave me the ability to carry on a conversation with a native speaker who is happy to give me feedback on my grammar: something that otherwise is only available by visiting a country or conveniently having a friend in real life who speaks the language you're learning.

The effect of the internet on language barriers is huge. Don't shy away from communicating with people that speak other language, or using resources that aren't written in your native tongue. You might gain access to an interesting point of view that nobody from your corner of the world could have come up with.

When the digital divide and the rural-urban divide align

We talked at one point during this quarter about who is "left out" when they are not constantly connected--either because they choose not to be--or because they have no opportunity to be. For the former category, I suggested the elderly as an example because they may not be willing to invest the time to learn new skills, to master new technology. Plus, we should remember that it is more difficult "for an old dog to learn new tricks."

Now, a front-page story in today's New York Times reminds us of a group who would like to be connected, but who don't have a choice. The headline is "Digital Age is Slow to Arrive in Rural America." In it, journalist Kim Severson reports from Coffeeville, Alabama, population 563, in non-metropolitan Clarke County, where only half of residents have access to the broadband that so many of us take for granted. The story focuses on Coffeeville, but it is essentially about the Obama Administration's plan to "wire" the nation for broadband and close the digital divide--with a special focus on unserved and underserved communities--many of them rural. More than $7 billion in stimulus funding was earmarked for this effort. Severson summarizes the situation:

In rural America, only 60 percent of households use broadband Internet service, according to a report released Thursday by the Department of Commerce. That is 10 percent less than urban households. Over all, 28 percent of Americans do not use the Internet at all.

In Clarke County, the situation is even worse. Half of the county's residents cannot easily engage in e-commerce, consult their physician online, participate in online banking, upload family photos to Facebook, or make an appointment with a public official. With cell phone service also lacking in many parts of the county, they also cannot receive emergency alerts. Severson tells us that the only computer many Coffeeville students ever touch is at school. For many residents, it is at the library.

Severson's story quotes Brian Depew of the Center for Rural Affairs, who likens broadband to electricity early last century, when the federal government made a huge investment in rural electrification to level the playing field for rural people and places and bring them a critical service.

“You often hear people talk about broadband from a business development perspective, but it’s much more significant than that ... . This is about whether rural communities are going to participate in our democratic society. If you don’t have effective broadband, you are cut out of things that are really core to who we are as a country.”

The story is a good reminder of the myriad ways we have come to rely on being constantly connected, ways not available to rural residents because the digital divide all too often does align along the rural-urban axis. Read a related post on Legal Ruralism here.

View a map of the places with broadband access here.

Goodbye Books, Hello Digital Texts: Is the Internet the Modern Printing Press Revolution?

In 1450, Johannes Gutenberg created the first printing press. This tool led to an incredible revolution: books had previously been available only to the educated scholars and scribes in monasteries. The printing press, however, made it possible for books to be made quickly and in larger quantities, allowing for the mass spread of knowledge and information among the general public. Humanity blossomed as books trickled down through the people and spread across the world. This was the beginning of the ability for any literate person to develop a relationship with books and glean a more complete understanding of the world. This spread of books connected the world in new ways; people across the globe could develop and grow with the knowledge they found in books that had been brought by traders from far-off lands. The printing press allowed for the widespread availability of books, and a deep relationship was forged between books and their readers.

            I always had a deep relationship with books. During my childhood years, almost every piece of knowledge or tidbit of information I got was from books. My family was the proud owner of the entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica. The bookshelves was crammed full of these volumes, and they smelled musty and old, sweet and papery, just the way that good books are supposed smell. We always had one volume out on a pedestal in the hallway; that showed that we were “intellectual” people and had access to volume upon volume of invaluable knowledge. That was rather pretentious; the books, however, made me feel worldly and well informed. I would stand on tiptoe and flip through the pages, reading entry after entry for hours. 

           

             If I wanted to know anything, I looked it up in a book. If it wasn’t in a book I had in my possession, I traipsed down to the local library and looked it up there. If the book wasn’t there, I did not have access to the information. That was simply the way it was. Now, there has been another massive spread-of-information revolution: this is the digitalization and availability of any piece of knowledge via the Internet. Virtually any piece of information is accessible at the touch of a button. My old, treasured encyclopedias lie stagnant on their bookshelves, covered in an ever-growing layer of dust. Any piece of information I need is online, and the occasions where I open a book to find a piece of information are so rare that I cannot remember the last time I did just that.  I “never” have time to read books anymore; all of my time is sucked up doing online homework, socializing on Facebook, flipping through online news articles, or spending hours bouncing around Wikipedia. Of course, it is an incredible luxury having almost any piece of information at the tip of my fingers. Any question that comes to mind can quickly be typed into Google, and voila, I have thousands of websites related to my question.

            Real books, not the Internet, were once my entire life. I was so excited when my grandfather bought me a beautiful, old copy of The Iliad for my twelfth birthday. The Iliad had been stolen from our local library and I had not had other access to it. I read the book cover-to-cover in two days, and I was so happy to finally be able to read the story that I had been waiting for years to read. Now, books like The Iliad are a click away. The Perseus Digital Library, or the "Perseus Project," is an online library for the largest collection classic books, all in a digitalized form, and available in almost any language, including English and the original Greek or Latin. All of this is available to the general public, free of charge. Not only that, but for each word, name, or idea presented, readers can simply click on a word in the digitalized text to have an immediate pop-up that gives the word's definition, relevance, history, and meaning to the text. These pop-ups also provide links to further sources of information on this word, idea or concept, if you are so inclined as to learn more. Now, when reading The Odyssey online, I have instant access to the text, hundreds of digitalized footnotes that link me directly to the sources they indicate, and links to the maps (both modern and ancient) of the islands mentioned by Homer in his classic story of Odysseus's journey home.

            Other online sources make the contents of millions of books instantly available to anyone. The website eBooks.com offers books of almost any type, including academic, popular, and professional. These books are offered in a digital form that be accessed form that can be downloaded or simply accessed from any computer, PDA or cell phone with the touch of a button. Is the Internet the modern printing press revolution? Is the world changing rapidly because of all of these new, electronic ways of accessing a plethora of knowledge? Now that we have this technology, who needs to bother with the boring, old books anyway?

Well, frankly, I would like to bother with the old, boring books. I dearly miss their simplicity and the quiet, wholesome integrity they afford us. While this abundance of new technology affording instant connection to any information source is astounding, I fear that it is slowly sapping readers of the irreplaceable bond between a reader and a solid, ink and paper book.