The Tower of Babel vs the power of babble: Future political, economic and cultural consequences of synchronous, automated translation systems (SATS)

Since the dawn of human history, language differences have served as a barrier to full intercultural and international communication. The recent advent of synchronous, automatic translation systems (SATS), incorporated into the internet, are but the first sign of a communications revolution as profound as the invention of print. This article briefly surveys the following: (1) text/ speech recognition and translation problems; (2) current developments in machine translation (MT) and artificial intelligence (AI) devoted to resolving these problems; and (3) potential future SATS technological developments and uses. The second half of the article is devoted to a wide-ranging analysis of several potentially profound future political, economic and cultural consequences of SATS. The main conclusion points to a paradox: although (perhaps because) SATS will lead to greater linguistic (and external-cultural) differentiation, the overall impact will be centripetal - greater integration among the world's peoples, more international peace, and a general higher level of agreement regarding norms and values.