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Monday, May 17, 2010 at 12:05 AM
12:05AM

A classic evolution: American-invented becomes globally-owned--and locally adapted

DateMonday, May 17, 2010 at 12:05AM

BBC News online story by way of brother Andy.

"Historic" line comes from old friend Rod Beckstrom, now head of ICANN.

To me, this is one of America's most profound success stories in spreading globalization.  

As for the Balkanization fears, that's way overblown.  The future is machine translation.

Cultures have to be able to format the web in their own languages, plain and simple.  Enough language destruction will happen anyway, but the biggies like Mandarin and Arabic will thrive, and we will all learn them all, on some level, with our big advantage being American English's uncanny willingness to absorb new words from other languages.

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