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| Bart
FM Droog
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| SOME
THOUGHTS ON INTERNET, EUROPE AND LITERATURE
Culture pessimists of all countries, be silent! As long as there
is something like freedom of speech, people will tend to express
their opinions, mostly about things they cannot have formed a proper
opinion about, since they don?t know anything about the subject.
As an editor of an American based internet search engine, reviewing
and editing descriptions of web sites, I have learned that most
of what I read in newspapers or heard in discussions about internet
can be dismissed as not being of any value.
To begin with the fable of ?The World Wide Web?. As we all know,
internet was started as an American military network, designed to
keep communications open in case of a nuclear war. In the last ten
years internet has developed into a major civilian computer network,
where people can shop, gather information and communicate with each
other. As such internet is a mere shopping mall. Anyone looking
for information on the internet will use one or more search engines.
And what happens then: most of the search engines stop at national
boundaries. Only a small minority of them can truly be called world
wide.
It?s for instance very hard for me as a Dutchman to enter the Belgian
internet world. Even though more than half of the Belgiums speak
Dutch, Netherlands search engines don?t list Belgian sites and the
other way round. Only after contacting Belgian friends and asking
them for the addresses of the Belgian search engines was I able
to enter these machines, which couldn?t be found via the so called
world wide web.
On the other hand internet is a boost to the linguistic wealth in
this world. As one studies sites in for instance Russia, Belarussia,
Ukraine, Argentina, China, Australia and Greenland one has the instant
possibility to study the languages used on these sites, not only
by reading it but also by listening to it. Which is a lot more than
listening to foreign radio stations or watching television programs
in languages you cannot comprehend, because via the internet you
can control the speed in which the information reaches you.
It?s not expensive to create a website, so in my opinion for all
small languages like Faroese, Greenlandic and Frisian internet may
prove to be the saviour, as long as the designers design the sites
bilingual.
Let us face the simple fact that if you want to communicate with
people all over the world you will need a common language. The main
language of internet is English (Spanish, French, German, Portuguese,
Russian and Chinese are also important languages, but - compared
to English - play a less important role). Just like in the era of
colonisation of Latin America, Africa and the Pacific a ?lingua
franca? is - after all - needed.
THOUGHTS ABOUT EUROPE
As long as tribal thoughts darken the brains of human beings no
lasting peace will ever be found.
EUROPEAN LITERATURE
One can only speak of European literature when speaking in the broadest
of manners. Since literature is an offspring of culture, which is
formed by the history of a people, one cannot speak of something
like African, Asian or European literature, because all these consist
of so many different cultures. Even Australian literature contains
two very different sorts: the Anglo-Saxon and the Aboriginal literature.
As long as Europe is populated by at least people from 40 different
cultures, using more than 40 languages one cannot speak or even
think about European literature.
DISAPPEARING LITERATURES?
Even the so-called ?dead languages? aren?t so dead after all: Latin,
widely considered as being a ?dead? language, acquires every year
new words for subjects unknown to the classical Romans and functions
still as the ?lingua franca? to people from the medical profession.
Literature can be called ?dead? if nobody studies it anymore or
has any knowledge of it. Which means that ?dead? literature is in
fact very rare and when discovered isn?t dead anymore.
EUROPE ONCE MORE
What is Europe? To me it?s one of the most blood-stained continents
to be found on this planet called Earth. Populated by human beings
who are capable of living in peace with each other but are also
able to murder each other, just like that. As long as they are ruled
by wise governments which realise that war and dictatorship - even
though they belong to the European cultural heritage - are not smart
options, Europe could evolve into a truly peaceful union. But at
this moment, on this continent dictators and wars still can be found
and will be found, I?m afraid. Literature has never had the power
to change that and will not have it in the future. And maybe for
the better. Because when politics and literature meet, one gets
results like Hitler?s Mein Kampf or comrade Mao?s Red Book.
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