Language vs. Technology

Via InformationPolitics, I caught the Sydney Morning Herald's article, 'Web chief warns of domain name chaos'. An excerpt:

To date, website names can only be registered using Latin characters, which effectively alienates countries using Arabic, Chinese and other foreign letters from registering internet addresses in their native tongue.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is a non-profit body responsible for, among other things, administering the domain name system (DNS)...

...One source of the pressure was Adama Samassekou, president of the African Academy of Languages in Mali, who said that the Anglo-centric internet left people isolated and marginalised.

"I think the digital divide is not as important as the linguistic divide. And that's the one we should be bridging in order to guarantee the democratic governance of the internet," said Samassekou.

But Twomey refuses to rush the process, and is currently conducting "laboratory testing" to ensure that nothing can go wrong...

I understand ICANN's position. On a technical level, this isn't a 'snap your fingers' solution. On the flip side, I've met Adama Samassekou in the context of culture and ICT at CARDICIS, and is a focused person with his heart in the right place. They're both quite correct.

Connecting everyone on the internet doesn't make much sense if we can't all understand each other, or use the internet in our own native languages. English speakers are still at advantage on the internet, though content in other languages is increasing exponentially. With more people coming online around the world, English is rapidly becoming less dominant as the language for content.

If globalization is accepted as fact, then the issue of linguistic divides is more pressing than technological divides. The core problem, of course, is that there had to political pressure to get this started in the first place.