Moonwatcher

Language April 20, 2006

Language is arguably the most important contributor in allowing humans to communicate with each other. It is something that unifies and defines whole races and cultures, but is equally able to cause division and conflict. With the growth of mass communication, world travel and the internet, which language should we be using to talk to each other with? My choice would be for English, but that is only because it’s the only language I speak and ‘coincidently’ it is becoming a de facto world language, so the need for me to learn another language seems redundant. However, English is not the most spoken language. According to Dennis O’Neal, Mandarin Chinese is with approximately one billion speakers and English comes in fourth behind Hindi and Spanish. These figures vary between researchers as they are estimates, but all agree that English is not the top language. Does this mean that we should all go off and learn Mandarin? At this point, no, but, with China’s emergence as a world power, who knows in five to ten years!

The reasons for English’s ascendancy are many and varied and may include such things as its openness to integrate words from other languages into its vocabulary. This possibly says more about the people speaking it, but that’s not the point of this entry. With regards to internet, again according to Dennis O’Neal, approximately 90% of all traffic is in English. Does this mean that the majority of websites, forums, blogs etc exclude the majority of the world’s population from the information, ideas and communities on-line? Statistically speaking, yes. If you’re wealthy enough, have an understanding of computers and can speak English, then the internet is brilliant. The connections that can be made with like minded people around the world and the amount of information that can be sourced are astounding. But if you’re poor, technology illiterate and a non-English speaker, what do you do?

With the uptake of computer technology worldwide and the adoption of English as a world language, what is to become of unwritten languages? Think of it like this. To read this blog, you need to have English literacy skills as it uses an alphabet based on Latin script. Therefore, English is both a spoken and written language. I have to be able to write it and you have to be able to read it (and vice versa if you leave a comment). It’s obvious to us because we as individuals have communicated like this since we were children. But if you are part of a culture that has a verbal language (that is, no alphabet), how do you do a blog entry? Does the move towards becoming a ‘global community’ mean the end of traditional indigenous communities? If so, what are we losing?

You can read more at Kryss Tal

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Addiction? April 20, 2006

So you’ve been online for sometime now. You’ve updated your hardware and software and have justified the extra expense of switching to broadband. Now you have a fast, reliable, always on internet connection. You start to spend more time online doing such things as downloading music, conversing in chat rooms, reading articles and perhaps even blogging. Its then that you start to realise that you are spending more and more of your time online. More of your time is taken up talking nonsense in chat rooms, responding to blog comments, downloading music you can’t stand etc, but you still spend hours a day on the internet, even though you believe that most of the time you’re not doing anything constructive online. Do you have an internet addiction? Does internet addiction really exist?

We’ve all heard the horror stories of people staying online for days, if not week’s straight playing games, and other people sourcing pornography they claim they wouldn’t have accessed if it weren’t available online. Is this the internet’s fault? No, it can’t be, it’s a computer, it only does what the operator wants it to do. According to John M. Grohol, Psy.D, there isn’t an internet addiction disorder, but rather, perceived over use of the internet is an indicator of existing psychological disorders that can be treated with current treatments. For example, people who talk on the phone for hours aren’t seen as having a ‘phone addiction’. Also, internet usage has to be placed in context, for example, if you’re a university student, how many hours a day are you online? (Don’t answer that!). If there is an internet addiction, the current research methods are not going to uncover it. For a first hand look, go to the Internet Addiction Survey. Can you draw a relationship between your responses and behaviour being related to the internet?

Whatever you reasons to go online, if you’re happy with it, keep doing it! (as long as it’s not illegal!). The internet is a socially connecting device and if your spending hours per week communicating with people with a similar interest to yourself, where is the harm in that? Like wise if you are a passive user, such as reading news and current affairs articles. I guess the moderation rule applies here, just like it does with everything else to do with life. If you feel you have a problem, seek professional help, for the rest of us; don’t be afraid to turn the power button off every now and then!

You can read more at CNN, Wikipedia and American Psychological Association

The power April 20, 2006

On August 14, 2003, the unthinkable happened. The north eastern United States and part of eastern Canada were thrown into darkness. For almost twenty four hours, public and private lights went off, public transport was shut down, the stock exchange suspended trading, digital communications failed and the internet was disrupted. It affected over fifty million people and had a financial cost of $US6 Billion. What was it? A terrorist attack? An alien invasion? A grand scheme to rob a bank? It was none of these. It was a disruption to the electricity supply caused by power lines coming into contact with trees resulting in a major blackout.

The significance of this event on people who use the internet regularly is quite dramatic. For all the effort, time and money put into computer hardware and software design, creation and integration and for all the effort put in by people worldwide on using, exploring and expanding computers use’s and applications , there is one levelling factor – electricity. An unreliable power supply renders all electrical equipment (not just computers) redundant. For you to read this blog right now means that you are using a reliable electricity source. Without it, all you are looking at is your reflection in a blank screen!

So next time you logon to the internet to check your e mail or converse in your cyber community or whatever your reason, just take a moment to consider what’s powering your computer and no, I’m not referring to its processor! If the worlds leading industrialized nation can suffer such an infrastructure failure, what does that say about technological advancement and wealth creation? Oh, and one more thing, a similar event happened in Europe six weeks later.

You can read more at BBC, CNN and Wikipedia