The Tower of Babel vs. the Internet
Remnant Review
The story of the tower of Babel is the most famous Bible story that appears after the story of Noah's flood.
In English, we derive the word "babble" from the tower of Babel. It is the story of men's inability to communicate with each other. It is therefore the story of the breakdown of the division of labor.
The context of the story, which appears in Genesis 11, was a society that was unified under a single state. It had a single confession of faith. A confession of faith is always a matter of the tongue.
This was a one-world state, and it was also a one-state world.
The members of that society, under the administration of the centralized government, which had an alliance with the priesthood, had big plans.
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth (Gen. 11:1-4).
They wanted to make a name for themselves. They wanted to define themselves. They wanted to define themselves in terms of a tower that would symbolically reach into heaven. This tower would be a symbol of man's staircase to divinity. It was probably a ziggurat, which from a distance looks like a staircase.
The story says that God broke apart that effort by means of confusion: confusion of language. It would no longer be possible for that society to build the tower, which would be a manifestation of the one-world order. There would be no one world order.
Politicians and their court apologists have been trying to complete that tower ever since. It is the most beloved public works project of all: a stairway to heaven.
It is a stairway, all right. But it goes down, not up.
THE DIVISION OF LABOR
The scattering of mankind did not mean that the division of labor would disappear from society. It did not. It never does. It was manifested in a new way. Instead of concentrating the world's population in one geographical area, under one priestly state, the family of man was scattered into multiple families. These families were divided by geography, language, and race.
The earth offers enormous diversity, geographically speaking. Therefore, with different groups inhabiting different parts of the world, there can be specialization. It becomes possible for men to trade with each other in a gigantic international division of labor. There are restraints on this division of labor. Language and geography are aspects of this separation. But it has become possible for men to enjoy the benefits of ever-greater specialization, once international trade became widespread.
This is not a new insight. It goes back to the second half of the fourth century. A scholar named Libanius commented on this. He was a friend of the emperor Julian, the last of Rome's pagan emperors (361-63 A.D.). His insight probably goes back earlier, but we cannot trace it. (The scholar who discovered this was an economist, Jacob Viner.)
TRANSLATION SOFTWARE AND THE TOWER
Within fundamentalist circles, there is an endless fascination with Bible prophecy. Every few years, some fundamentalist author identifies the beast, the Antichrist, 666, and other figures of the book of Revelation. Because they are right-wingers, they never made the connection between 666 and Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Actually, all of this is utterly inconsistent with the official theology of pre-millennial dispensationalism. The clock of prophecy stopped, depending on which fundamentalist you consult, either with Peter's sermon in Acts 2 or with the ministry of Paul. The clock of prophecy does not begin to tick again, according to the official theology of dispensationalism, until after the bodily rapture into heaven of all Christians. So, the clock of prophecy cannot possibly be ticking today. Therefore, any dispensationalist who tells you that a recent event is a fulfillment of Bible prophecy does not understand his own theology. However, if the person speaks of shadows of as yet unfulfilled prophecy, then he is at least seeking consistency. These so-called shadows of prophecy are not the fulfillment of prophecy, but hints that the rapture is approaching rapidly. But I digress.
What we're seeing today in terms of the development of real-time language translation software is one of the most significant developments in the history of man. It does not get enough attention. The magnitude of such software, in terms of its effects on society, cannot be overestimated. It really will produce an institutional revolution.
There is no Bible prophecy that says that the society of man is going to overcome the linguistic barriers of the tower. And yet, strange as it may seem, we are seeing the "shadows" of exactly that. This was a matter of science fiction in Star Trek, but it is not yet a matter of serious social philosophy. It will be.
STAR TREK VS. FORBIDDEN PLANET
I watched a documentary this week: Chaos on the Bridge. It was about the creation and early development of Star Trek, the Next Generation. One of the important aspects of this development was Gene Roddenberry's commitment to a humanistic theology of a new humanity. Mankind in the 25th century will no longer have conflicts of any kind. A universal humanism will overcome the effects of sin. The documentary provided a series of interviews with the early writers. They said it was incredibly difficult to write decent scripts in the first two seasons, when Roddenberry was still in charge. Without conflicts, there isn't any drama. The man who became the chief writer referred to Roddenberry's vision as wacky-doodle. The documentary closed with a bluegrass song called Wacky Doodle. Here, William Shatner describes those years.
I think Roddenberry's humanism was about as close as any Hollywood dramatist has ever gotten to the original theology of the society of the tower of Babel. There was going to be a New World Order. This order would be a manifestation of man's self-divinization. The new humanity, being without sin, would be unrestricted in its building of a comprehensive one-state society. Rushdoony has accurately identified this society: the society of Satan.
The original Star Trek movie reproduced the theme that Isaac Asimov favored, and which in our day is most eloquently defended by the inventor and visionary, Ray Kurzweil. It is the theology of what Kurzweil calls the singularity. It is the fusion of humanity and digital technology. The Wikipedia entry is accurate.
At the center of the massive ship, V'Ger is revealed to be Voyager 6, a 20th-century Earth space probe believed lost. The damaged probe was found by an alien race of living machines that interpreted its programming as instructions to learn all that can be learned, and return that information to its creator. The machines upgraded the probe to fulfill its mission, and on its journey the probe gathered so much knowledge that it achieved consciousness. Spock realizes that V'Ger lacks the ability to give itself a focus other than its original mission; having learned what it could on its journey home, it finds its existence empty and without purpose. Before transmitting all its information, V'Ger insists that the Creator come in person to finish the sequence. Realizing that the machine wants to merge with its creator, Decker offers himself to V'Ger; he merges with the Ilia probe and V'Ger, creating a new form of life that disappears into another dimension.
There is a new type of being by means of the fusion of humanity, computerized technology, and robotics. This is exactly what Ray Kurzweil says is going to happen sometime within the next two or three decades. He is trying to keep himself alive long enough so that he can participate in a form of eternal life by means of the downloading of his digitized brain into a computer. He is a true visionary. The whole idea depends on the concept of a world without viruses, Trojan horses, and the blue screen of death.
The best Hollywood version of this that we have ever had was Forbidden Planet (1956). If Kurzweil is correct, then mankind is about to evolve into the Krell. But there will be monsters of the Id.
SHINAR VS. THE BALKANS
Because of Moore's law, we have now reached the point at which real-time translation software is possible. With respect to the major languages, within a decade, we are going to have the ability to talk with people by means of cell phones. These cell phones will be dirt cheap. People will be able to communicate across space, whether 10,000 miles or 6 feet, by talking into a cell phone. A person's words will be translated into whatever major language the other person speaks.
We are living in an era in which the curse of the tower of Babel is going to be overcome by technology. This is no longer science fiction.
There are approximately 6500 languages in the world, but about half of the world's population speaks one of 10 languages. Translation software will be able to handle these 10 languages within a decade. Within three decades, something in the range of 80% of the world's population will be plugged into real-time open-source translation software. The masses will have low-cost cell phones that will do the translating. Even if this takes 50 years, it doesn't matter. We can see where this is heading.
Or can we? There is no clarity of visions.
On the one hand, the globalists assume that there is going to be some kind of political unification of humanity. On the other hand, scholars such as Martin van Creveld and Jacques Barzun think that the modern nation-state is going to go the way of all flesh, and it will be replaced by far smaller political entities. They think it is unlikely that anything like a one state world is going to be created by the machinations of the globalists. I think they are correct.
So, we see a war of the worldviews in progress today. It is a war between the vision of Jean Monnet and the globalists versus the vision of Hayek's spontaneous order.
The old vision of Hollywood and much of science fiction was that computer power is going to lead to something comparable to an all-powerful state. There are still defenders of this vision. The incarnation of this vision is the National Security Administration. The NSA is the antichrist in these scenarios.
In contrast, visionaries of the decentralized order believe that Moore's law favors encryption, secrecy, voluntary exchange, decentralized communications, and the power of individual initiative. There is no way, say these defenders of individualism, for the modern state's bureaucracies to deal with the rapidity of the innovation that the Internet and Moore's Law have combined to empower. NSA cannot possibly keep up with the volume of decentralized communications. It is overwhelmed by the digital equivalent of noise.
Nevertheless, there is no question that we really are seeing the technological foundations of the reestablishment of the kind of division of labor that prevailed at the tower of Babel. There will be face-to-face, voice-to-voice communications that unite billions of people. At the same time, there will be Facebook, which is creating the Balkanization of billions of people.
I think encryption is going to overwhelm the NSA. I think decentralization is going to overwhelm the New World Order. We are not going to become the Krell. We are not going to become the Borg. We're going to become participants in the spontaneous order.
When translation software is simultaneous and approximately 96% accurate, the spontaneous order is going to experience a quantum leap. When 80% of humanity can communicate with each other on a face-to-face basis, humanity is going to develop institutions very different from those that prevailed at the tower of Babel. There will not be a one-state world. There will be a multistate world. There will be a lot more states than exist today. NSA's task will get that much more difficult.
I think we're headed toward Balkanization. It will be the Balkanization of trade and communications. The ability of the globalists to direct the world's economy by means of central banking and Keynesian deficits will be seen for what it is in theory today: an ersatz order that is going to lead to a monumental disorder. We are in the middle of a vast delusion: the delusion of the state's ability to build a monetary and fiscal tower that reaches under heaven. That monstrosity is going to disintegrate. It will be replaced.
The ability of the establishments' information gatekeepers to control the flow of information has been gone for at least 15 years. They will never regain control.
CONCLUSION
The globalists want the creation of a social and political order comparable to the one that prevailed on the plains of Shinar. They are going to get almost the exact opposite. They are going to get decentralization with communications.
There is going to be a lot of economic and personal pain in between our world and the new international division of labor. I suppose it will be something like what Roman citizens faced when they fled the massive bureaucracy and taxation of the Roman Empire in the fourth century. They had to go through the lines of the barbarians. But, once on the other side of the lines, probably stripped of any wealth they brought out of Rome, they entered a world of decentralized power. They had escaped from the society of Satan.