packets or financial vouchers. Protocols embody shared rules. Their subtle, decisive

packets or financial vouchers. Protocols embody shared rules. Their subtle, decisive power is to place each bit of data ina reliable, predictable order, just as diplomatic protocol might seat ambassadors at a negotiation. “Protocol,” the theorists Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker have written, “is a system for maintaining organization and control in networks.”18 In a world of older, more traditional power distributions Americans might worry about a day when another language, another “protocol” in a sense — Chinese or Spanish, say - would pry the central connective role away from English. Protocols are hard to change, of course. So many people have learned English; whole systems depend on its use. To suddenly switch the world’s airline pilots, bond traders and computer programmers to Chinese or Spanish would hardly be worth the immense cost and the colliding confusion such a transfer would demand. But it’s here where the Seventh Sense axiom, that connection changes the nature of an object, gives usa new view. For the first time, as a result of connectivity, a once unimagined possibility exists: rapid, real-time machine translation. Fast, ubiquitous network links mean that the central role of English is boiled away by another language than by a connected, intelligent network skin. “Good morning,” is less likely to be overtaken by a greeting from some other language as it is to be effortlessly, invisibly transmuted into “5 _E 4?” or “Buenos Dias.” Fast access to a great translation algorithm will be more important than the ability to speak English (or Spanish or Chinese). Even as an advocate of learning other languages, it’s hard not to feel that the American parents now plowing their children urgently into Chinese classes are missing the point. Fluency in any second language in the future will be an arcane specialty. Better to teach the kids how to build an Al, or to debate the moral reasoning of Confucius and Socrates than how to order dinner. The machines will take care of that. Power in a connected age will pool, then, not in the mouths and minds of English speakers, but rather into the hands of anyone who controls the best translation server. Connection has changed the nature of several objects here: The language itself, the people who use it - pilots, commodity traders, machines, you and J. You can see how the ability to design, build and turn on (or off) the fastest, smartest, most connected language machines becomes a nexus of fresh power. What will replace English isn’t Spanish or Chinese, but a protocol. This sort of specialized data-pipe will permit instant, always-improving translation. It will become as crucial to the operation of the global economy or research laboratories or entertainment companies as English now is. More crucial, in fact, because these machines will enable vast new communication links with a fidelity far better than pidgin-level speech. They will consider not only what we say, but what they suspect we mean to say in the quest of ever clearer discussion. The pre-network instinct of Fear Chinese! Fear Spanish! is the wrong one. As is the idea to teach the world Chinese or Spanish as a source of power. Rather, Can we control this turbo-smart connected language platform? is the right question. So many of the threats we worry about today have been similarly 18 “Protocol”: Alexander Galloway and Eugene Thacker, “Protocol, Control, and Networks” in Grey Room 17, Fall 2004, pp. 9 20 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018255