Internet and the Tower of Babel

Was the Babel Tower the first www attempt? Today our teacher spoke about a book, written by T. Friedman, called "The Lexus and The Olive Tree" (click on the title to go to his page) . He writes about globalization and compares Internet with the Tower of Babel. I have to say that it really got me thinking all the way back from university.

For those less informed about Babel: it is a story at the beginning of the Bible (Book of Genesis, 11:1-9). Human beings have grown in number; some of them decide to move east; they arrive to a nice spot and decide to build a tower to reach heaven. God looks at what is happening and decides to "create" the different languages of the world, in order to avoid that.

The story starts with these words: “The whole world spoke the same language, with the same vocabulary." I had always thought that this was good. Today I started to think that maybe, to be all the same is to destroy human creativity and capacity for craziness. I think that when God created the languages, He was trying to avoid what now is happening: The sameness.

Thanks to the web we all speak the same language, find information in the same place, and develop our social life in the same way. Facebook, twitter, MySpace… are they not words that we all speak and understand? God’s plan has always been unity and diversity. Why do we need to find our unity in sameness? As I was arriving home I started to see this Tower of Babel as a prison; please, let God make us always different!