Well, this is very intersting - although I wonder if there is really
proof of all the statements, for instance, items number 2, 4, and 5,
and I also wonder if it is really relevant to compare which languages
the "most published authors" are published in, when there are also
lots of smaller - local or otherwise narrow - markets for certain
authors.

Still, the idea that the extinction of languages in the world is also
lessening the amount of knowledge is intriguing. A bit McLuhanesque:
the medium has an intrinsic message.

One could imagine the extreme, when we had maybe thousands of
dialects within one national language. Maybe the knowledge amount was
even bigger then - but on the other hand how far could it travel? And
if it could travel, what significance would it have to others?
Probably some, if we think of information that is similar for similar
kinds of villages, for instance. But probably a lot would be
insignificant to many others - unless of course they have a
non-utalitarian interest in others people's habits, history etc. This
might boil down to the old question whether the preferable knowledge
is know-how or know-that.

A kindred question is perhaps if there was a loss or a gain of
knowledge when Latin as the academic language was abandoned for
national languages. One often hears the idea that Latin back then was
some sort of ascii or something similar to the kind of "creole
English" written on the web today by people like myself, who have not
English as their first language. Latin was what made European
scholars in different countries "compatible".

And - regarding "the accepted meme of our knowledge explosion": maybe
it is not that accepted. I come to think of Eliot:

Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
- T.S. Eliot, Choruses from "The Rock" I

Another interesting - and very important - question regarding
knowledge is whether access to the worlds information through
networks, CD-ROM's etc make more old-fashioned "intra-cranial"
knowledge unnecessary. (I wrote about that a couple of years ago in
an article titled "Knowledge-on-demand: Can knowledge be switched on
and off - and can it be stored outside of our heads?", at
http://art-bin.com/art/akn-on-demande.html.)


Karl-Erik Tallmo

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KARL-ERIK TALLMO, writer, editor

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>[on a recent trip to India, Dr Om Vikas from the Ministry of
>Information gave a presentation and one of the slides really hit me
>hard. I have reproduced it here, with permission. This is the
>first time I have ever heard someone question the accepted meme of
>our knowledge explosion. Even if I disagree with the fringes, it
>is a bold and interesting point. Maybe an analogy with the loss of
>biological diversity stands: there are more biomass on earth, but of
>fewer types. -brewster ]
>
>
>Is there gain in knowledge or loss of knowledge?
>
>* From an estimated 10,000 world languages in 1900, about 6,700
>languages survived in 2000. Two percent of the world's languages are
>becoming extinct every year.
>
>* There is worldwide, un quantifiable erosion of cultural
>participation, knowledge and innovation.
>
>* With the loss of language, we lose art and ideas, scientific
>information and technological innovation capacity.
>
>* World-level literacy is improving. More people can read than ever
>before, but fewer people create stories.
>
>* There is a tendency from being creators to consumers at the time
>when technology could have amplified our creative capacities.
>
>* UNESCO study (1999) of 65 languages: 49 languages (75%) had
>experienced real decline in the number of works translated from
>these languages to other languages.
>
>* The proportion for English arose from 43 percent in 1980 to over
>57 percent in 1994.
>
>* The share held by top four translated languages (English, Spanish,
>French and German) rose from 65 percent in 1980 to 81 percent in
>1994.
>
>* According to a UNESCO study involving the world's 140 most
>published authors: 90 out of 140 were English writers in 1994
>compared to 64 out of 140 in 1980.
>
>* There is a collapse in authorship, translation and quality in
>other languages.
>
>Cultural Erosion!
>
>Dr. Om Vikas
>
>
>
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