Hi Brewster --

Thanks for bringing this to the list's attention.

I've been worried for quite some time about the erosion of both language
diversity and of culture-creation in favor of "culture"-consumption. So I find
it tempting to agree with all of Dr. Vikas's points.

However, I think the link between erosion of language diversity and erosion of
the creative impulse is not causal but rather both phenomena are symptoms of the
spread of Western mono-culture which is itself so well illustrated by the
Doctor's other statistics.

Regarding the more-is-less conlusion, I think one has to agree that the total
amount of cultural diversity is suffering -- but a devil's advocate would argue
that "total cultural diversity" is a meaningless abstraction since no person or
entity could actually access that cultural diversity and thousands of isolated
microcultures simply create the experience of a single tiny microculture for
billions of people; whereas by contrast the growing global archive known as the
Internet (and other media that perpetuate Western monoculture) have placed more
of the world's culture at the fingertips of more people than ever possible
before -- creating a net increase in *total access* to culture, even if the
resulting culture is (inevitably?) more homogeneous.

Personlly, I prefer the thousands of tiny microcultures. But the opposing
argument has validity.

-c


At 1:45 PM -0800 2/19/03, Brewster Kahle wrote:
>[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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