Language

Charles E Hill

Thu Oct 18 21:10:58 -0700 2007

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"That there are so many users in Asia suggests the content of the Internet will eventually contain far more information in languages other than English than it does today," he added.

I'll have to disagree here.  In China, in the cities, English classes are mandatory starting about 3rd grade and running all the way thru high school.  College entrance exams are in English, and that is done on purpose.  Graduate exams and many upper level courses are taught in English.  India has similar programs in place.

India already surpasses the United States in number of English-language speakers.  In a few more years, so will China.

Non-English sites will appeal only to local or regional audiences, but if you want to reach anyone outside your area then your best bet is English.  Thanks to Britain, and much to the chagrin of France, it has evolved into a Lingua Franca -- the common tongue used in the air traffic control industry worldwide, and much of the business and travel markets.

While the sum-total of all non-English web pages may one day surpass all of the English ones, I can't foresee any other language gaining anything close to the level of dominance.

Language

Erick Tyson von Mueller

Thu Oct 18 21:45:39 -0700 2007

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I would also point out that I have personally observed a trend toward reduced literacy in one's (non-English) native language in favor of increasing literacy in English. If one doesn't have much money or time to learn, one is better off devoting that money and time to learning to read and write English, especially if one's parents cannot read or write one's native language anyway. This will likely result in not only the plurality of web pages being in English, but the plurality of the most important web pages being in English. However, shock sites will likely continue to be tailored for local consumption.

Language

Zanthrick

Fri Oct 19 06:58:00 -0700 2007

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Well, I just came back from living in China for three years last month. You can go to any internet bar, good luck finding anyone with English on their screen. Actually, good luck finding anyone either not playing games, not using QQ, or not watching movies, and actually using "the web."

Though your point might be valid in a few years as I've noticed that the recent graduates from high schools are much better at English then just a few years ago. But the question is there, who will keep up with their English. Yes, they have exams; however, everything is just memorized for the exams. Three months later they know nothing that was on the exam.

I think for English to take off there it will require people to immigrate to those countries. After all, many students in the US here are required more or less to take a foreign language. How many of them go out on the web and use it after they graduate? Maybe that's more of a fault of both countries education system that stress cheap education methods. That is, whatever is easiest to test and whatever is in the textbook...

On a side note, I did feel people had much more respect for teachers than in the US. But I feel that's more because of the horrible working conditions they have(slaves to their bosses, literally work all day, every day), and how many students they have. Not necessarily because people respect the school system more over there. Actually I met very few teachers or students who said anything good about their education system.

Vint Cerf-The Internet Evolution

Scott Johnson

Fri Oct 19 10:08:45 -0700 2007

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"I did find this, though, the Space Communications Protocol Standards webpage."

You might find this interesting:  Delay Tolerant Networking.  http://www/dtnrg.org/wiki
The theory is that communication to mars and farther breaks TCP/IP's routing mechanisms due to the extreme latency, so a "store and forward," or "bundle" mechanism must be implemented.

Another, slightly more futuristic option, exists in the possibility of exploiting quantum entanglement of two particles, one local and one remote, haveing been made so after the actual entanglement happened.  When we change the state of the local particle, the remote one changes state also, with zero latency.
Sounds like an intersting layer 1, eh?

Vint Cerf-The Internet Evolution

Timothy Brownawell

Fri Oct 19 11:15:30 -0700 2007

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Sounds like an intersting layer 1, eh?

It would be, if that was actually how that effect worked...

("entangled" basically means "we know that these two particles have the same (or opposite, or some more complex relation involving more particles) state, even though it hasn't been decided what that state is". There's no link between the particles. Changing the state of one doesn't change the state of the other, it breaks the entanglement. Measuring one tells you the state of the other one (unless someone's already broken the entanglement), but doesn't affect the state of the other one. Entanglement does not permit any form of communication, what it does let you do is speed up some kinds of computation by physically instantiating your system of equations.)

Vint Cerf-The Internet Evolution

Scott Johnson

Fri Oct 19 11:26:32 -0700 2007

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So you are saying this research from University of Michigan is totally wrong?
http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6016

Vint Cerf-The Internet Evolution

Scott Johnson

Fri Oct 19 11:30:47 -0700 2007

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Actual paper here... sorry.  Took me a bit to find it again.:
http://iontrap.physics.lsa.umich.edu/publications/archive/NaturePhysics_Maunz_20

Vint Cerf-The Internet Evolution

David Leppik

Fri Oct 19 12:02:18 -0700 2007

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Broken link, above. Regardless, you may want to read the paper carefully to see if they are actually claiming that information is propagated faster than light. See my post below; there's a subtle but big difference between events having happened simultaneously, and being able to use that fact to communicate.

Consider the "multiple worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics. (There are lots of interpretations of quantum mechanics, all of which result in the same observable universe.) In that view, every time there's a random event (imagine a coin flip), every possible outcome occurs, but we can only observe one outcome.

In that case, when you flip a coin, there's one of you flipping the coin. When you observe the way it went, you "split" into a heads-observing part of you and a tails-observing part of you. And as news of the event spreads throughout the universe, everything in the universe gets similarly bifurcated. But the heads-observers can only interact with other heads-observers.

If you think about it that way, there's all sorts of interesting research that can get done on quanum computers, quantum communications, and the like. And it all involves things that appear, in retrospect, simultaneously coordinated. But under the muliple worlds interpretation, that's only half the story.

Vint Cerf-The Internet Evolution

Scott Johnson

Fri Oct 19 12:12:00 -0700 2007

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That link was just broken.  When I pulled the URL out of a mail I sent a colleague some time previously before posting that link, I checked it.  It was live.  It looks like someone wants me to shut up.

Vint Cerf-The Internet Evolution

Scott Johnson

Fri Oct 19 13:08:40 -0700 2007

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Ahh.  Here we go:
http://iontrap.physics.lsa.umich.edu/publications/archive/NaturePhysics_Maunz_2007_2PhotonInt.pdf
and a more recent paper I will be reviewing shortly:
http://iontrap.physics.lsa.umich.edu/publications/archive/nature_449_68_moehring.pdf

Vint Cerf-The Internet Evolution

Timothy Brownawell

Fri Oct 19 13:57:30 -0700 2007

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After reading those briefly, I fail to see how my earlier statement would require them to be "totally wrong". What it sounds like they're doing is (1) make sure the two ions are in unknown but opposite states (with the photon interference thingy), and (2) directly measure them to verify that this really is the case. Which is exactly what I said entanglement is, and is very much *not* what the reporter in the article you also linked thought it was.

Vint Cerf-The Internet Evolution

Timothy Brownawell

Fri Oct 19 12:38:45 -0700 2007

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No, I'm saying that the reporter's claim of "Scientists could set the position of one qubit and know that its entangled mate will follow suit." is totally wrong.

Vint Cerf-The Internet Evolution

David Leppik

Fri Oct 19 11:42:59 -0700 2007

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Sorry, but entanglement doesn't violate relativity, so you can't use it to transmit information faster than light. That's a very common misconception, which the media gets wrong every time. The truth is slightly more complicated.

The effects of entanglement appear to be instantaneous, within the confines of relativity. That is to say, if you had quantum transmitter and a radio transmitter on Mars, along with receivers on Earth, sending a message on both simultaneously would result in both messages being received simultaneously.

The weird thing is that quantum entanglement isn't like sending a radio signal. Your "signal" is the act of breaking the entanglement through observation.* If you observe the receiver particle too early, you are breaking the entaglement, which acts as a history eraser which retroactively changes the remote particle.

A quantum message is along the lines of "I observed my entangled particle before you observed yours." But neither sender nor receiver knows whether that's true or not until after the fact.

Under relativity, there is no such thing as globally simultaneous events. Time is relative. And events propagate at the speed of light. When you send a signal via quantum entanglement, you're really just playing synchronization tricks between the sender and receiver.

*In quantum mechanics, observation doesn't require a human being. It just requires that particles (or fields) interact, such that one could observe.

grand unified rumsfeld theory

Thomas Lord

Fri Oct 19 19:31:09 -0700 2007

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It's what you know, what you know you know, what you don't know, what you know you don't know, what don't know you don't know, and what you don't know that you know.

I mean that, for real.

Quantum effects definitely imply synchronously determined observables that are space-like separated, but these effects say *nothing* about when that synchrony occured relative to any particular world line and they say don't in any way change the answers to the "what you know" questions other than in relativistic ways.

What this basically proves is that there exists a metaphysical truth which can not be explained by science.

We already knew that.   Newton an Einstein toyed with models that would deny it but it turns out that the same things can be described more accurately if your models assume the existence of the unknowable metaphysical truth.

-t

a big mistake

Thomas Lord

Fri Oct 19 19:38:32 -0700 2007

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A big mistake in the rhetoric here is that people are making a distinction between English and other languages.  Sanskrit and Latin and Classical Chinese are all very different languages, sure.   But, English is in a category by itself:  it is something that supposedly doesn't exist: it's a multi-generational universal creole.   It is a creole in the sense that it has a perpetually assimulative, crude-as-you-ilke, improvisational syntax (with constant mixing of influences).      The web is just going to accelerate the development of english.   I would predict that children of the children born today are going to be reading texts from Chinese authors that are what is then called English, but which both English and Chinese speakers of today would have non-trivial trouble puzzling out.   Chinese people will also be reading the same texts, without difficulty.

Famous pop-linguistics talks a lot about how languages separate from a common ancestor.  It's equally interesting how they combine and climb the lattice.

-t