Neal Stephenson Quote
In many parts of the world, you will find people of thesame ethnic group, living a few miles apart in similar valleys under similarconditions, speaking languages that have absolutely nothing in common with eachother. This sort of thing is not an oddity -- it is ubiquitous. Many linguistshave tried to understand Babel, the question of why human language tends tofragment, rather than converging on a common tongue? Has anyone come up withan answer yet?The question is difficult and profound, the Librarian says. Lagos had atheory.Yes?He believed that Babel was an actual historical event. That it happened in aparticular time and place, coinciding with the disappearance of the Sumerianlanguage. That prior to Babel Infopocalypse, languages tended to converge. Andthat afterward, languages have always had an innate tendency to diverge andbecome mutually incomprehensible -- that this tendency is, as he put it, coiledlike a serpent around the human brainstem.The only thing that could explain that is -- Hiro stops, not wanting to sayit.Yes? the Librarian says.If there was some phenomenon that moved through the population, altering theirminds in such a way that they couldn't process the Sumerian language anymore.Kind of in the same way that a virus moves from one computer to another,damaging each computer in the same way. Coiling around the brainstem.Lagos devoted much time and effort to this idea, the Librarian says. He feltthat the nam-shub of Enki was a neurolinguistic virus.
In many parts of the world, you will find people of thesame ethnic group, living a few miles apart in similar valleys under similarconditions, speaking languages that have absolutely nothing in common with eachother. This sort of thing is not an oddity -- it is ubiquitous. Many linguistshave tried to understand Babel, the question of why human language tends tofragment, rather than converging on a common tongue? Has anyone come up withan answer yet?The question is difficult and profound, the Librarian says. Lagos had atheory.Yes?He believed that Babel was an actual historical event. That it happened in aparticular time and place, coinciding with the disappearance of the Sumerianlanguage. That prior to Babel Infopocalypse, languages tended to converge. Andthat afterward, languages have always had an innate tendency to diverge andbecome mutually incomprehensible -- that this tendency is, as he put it, coiledlike a serpent around the human brainstem.The only thing that could explain that is -- Hiro stops, not wanting to sayit.Yes? the Librarian says.If there was some phenomenon that moved through the population, altering theirminds in such a way that they couldn't process the Sumerian language anymore.Kind of in the same way that a virus moves from one computer to another,damaging each computer in the same way. Coiling around the brainstem.Lagos devoted much time and effort to this idea, the Librarian says. He feltthat the nam-shub of Enki was a neurolinguistic virus.
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About Neal Stephenson
Stephenson's work explores mathematics, cryptography, linguistics, philosophy, currency, and the history of science. He also writes nonfiction articles about technology in publications such as Wired. He has written novels with his uncle, George Jewsbury ("J. Frederick George"), under the collective pseudonym Stephen Bury.
Stephenson has worked part-time as an advisor for Blue Origin, a company (founded by Jeff Bezos) developing a spacecraft and a space launch system, and also co-founded the Subutai Corporation, whose first offering is the interactive fiction project The Mongoliad. He was Magic Leap's Chief Futurist from 2014 to 2020.