theNoosphere.com

What the bloody hell??!??

Was that your first reaction? Wouldn't surprise me. It's Arabic for "Prepare for the next big thing". How and why did I do this? I'll tell you.

Universal translation-yeah, like Star Trek-is in the works in a serious way.

Twitter has recently has started translating its pages into non-English languages and will eventually, no doubt, offer tweets in multiple simultaneous translations.Global Twitter: Tweets Translated Into Any Language | Singularity Hub.

Only 50% of tweets right now are in English anyway-washingtonpost.com

And then there's Mojofiti-a new service that I just learned about that's in Beta test right now. It will offer Wordpress-powered blogging with 27 flags in the left pane which will translate everything into any of 27 languages. No doubt that number will increase over time.A Global Social Network Without The Language Barrier – Mojofiti | Singularity Hub

And of course there are already things like Babylon and even Google translation service-which works surprisingly well, actually. I used it to compose this thread title. In case you're wondering why Arabic?-well, most who come here know of my interest in neuroscience and one of my Facebook friends is an Egyptian medical student with the same interest in the latest medical advancements especially in neuroscience. He posts on other things as well-he recently has fallen in love with the movie Avatar and sometimes he posts in Arabic. I experimented with Google translate going back and forth and then tried it out in posting replies and found out that, in short sentences at least, Google does remarkably well. It does have trouble with long sentences-which will improve over time I'm sure-and cannot do phonetic Arabic chat...yet.

Oh, BTW, the iPhone has a translation app as well-as most of you may already know.

The point of all this is this. Advancements in communication over the last century have made geographical features less of an impediment. The Interwebz have been probably the biggest leap in people's ability to communicate regardless of their physical location-but the language barrier has still stood as an impediment to immediacy and facility of communication-but that's changing. I, as you know, am no "starry-eyed dreamer" preferring to find the facts of reality before drawing conclusions-however the trend is in the direction of removal of language difference as a speed-bump in social networking and it is something we must prepare for not only intellectually but emotionally as well. Evolution is, after all, survival of the most adaptable.

As long as I don't have to stick a fish in my ear.

You mean you don't have Bluetooth for your cell?

Love it.

Leaping ahead, oh ... maybe 20 years? ... we'll have internal mental access (either an embedded chip or its equivalent, or more likely, something far less invasive) to not only the web, but a real-time language translator.

You'll get off the airplane in Ulan Bator, hail a cab, get in, and chat up the cab driver on the way to the market. You'll walk the stalls at the market, haggling with vendors, talking to passerby, totally in touch and communication with the locals. In your head, anything a local says to you in Khalka, or even Kazakh, will be "spoken" in perfectly unaccented English, in real time, in the speaker's own perfectly reproduced voice, complete with inflections.

And it won't seem any more remarkable to you then than would standing in that same market today, iPhone in hand, talking to your friend back in Pierre, S. Dakota while simultaneously checking Google for the final score of the Capitals game the night before.

The future ... we're in it.

Om, the current research into things like thought control of wheelchairs and, to some extent, pc's suggest to me that a wearable interface would be more likely near-term-perhaps something embedded in a ball cap hooked to a wearable computer. Neural implants are most likely a decade or two down the road, I could be wrong though-science lately has developed a habit of sneaking up on us from time to time and saying "Hey, guess what I did!"

Aside:-Babylon, the downloadable translation software, does offer translation dictionaries for both Khalka Mongolian and Kazakh.

Serv...where does the cochlear implant fit into this discussion? Lots of success with that, right? Would the success and the study of that work with what Om is talking about or would they be too different.

The cochlear implant has caused quite a stir among the hearing impaired who see their lack of hearing not as a disability, but as a part of their culture. It's an interesting discussion.

JM, if you are referring to the cochlear implant as a technological component of a real-time translation system I would think that something more like a Bluetooth or a device similar to those being worked on as mentioned above, the head-worn appliance would be more publicly accepted than something requiring surgical implantation-except, of course for the eventual neural implant as a human/computer interface which would of course cover much more than merely translation.

On the subject of the cochlear implant and the culture of the hearing-impaired, I have personal insights I've gained because of three profoundly deaf first cousins of mine, all male, who have decided not to have the cochlear implantation done. There is a community/culture that has grown among the hearing-impaired which from my experience came into being as a result of maltreatment, misunderstanding, and simple mean-spirited ignorance on the part of a great many people who hear normally. For centuries deafness was equated with mental retardation, defectiveness as a person-one of those all to often displayed occasions where being "different" meant being not as good as. They formed a culture among themselves because they were denied admission into the mainstream culture at an equal level as valid human beings. The culture that has formed among them supplies an emotional need that they have no guarantee and therefore no trust of being obtained generally. I used to question the idea of not having the cochlear implant being done by my cousins but being around them and their wives. children and friends I saw the sense of community they had developed and gained a much greater understanding of why this community/culture trumps the benefits that could be obtained by getting the implant. This holds true for any group of people who because of a noticeable characteristic have a history of being treated "less than" and who therefore turn inward to those with the same characteristic for community support.

Absolutely. Every time I feel a tap on the shoulder these days, I turn around and someone hands me a piece of new technology that just boggles the mind. At least it boggles any mind that's been around long enough to appreciate, for instance, the concept of cell phones and the internet as commonplace.

Just got "free" upgraded cells for my daughters--full qwerty keyboards for texting, video camera, still camera, voice recorder, web access, mp3 player ... no charge. Just extend the existing contract.

Less than year ago the "free upgrade" I got (and the one I will naturally be carrying proudly for at least another year) was a simple flip phone with a comparatively embarrassing dearth of features/capabilities. Less than a year.

Good news is--assuming for the sake of discussion that the rocketing technological curve is a good thing--a year from now MY "free" upgrade may well include the bridge technology between the "implant" or other invisible (miniaturized bluetooth earpiece?) translation app and what we might expect it to look like today.

I originally picked twenty years as my time range for how long I thought it might take to miniaturize the kind of translation tech we're talking about enough to be, for all practical purposes, invisible. Which of course doesn't mean it would have to be an "implant"---just miniaturized or even disguised (ring, beltbuckle or common watch with wireless transmitter?) enough to allow the user to do so privately. Could be far less, I'm thinking.

Once the application exists, I suspect bringing it to market in competitive formats won't take very long. Everyone who travels or even leaves their own neighborhood in tomorrow's world is going to want one of those puppies.

Well, we can't quite swing Khalka or Kazakh yet, but we can now proudly bring you one of their southern neighbors.

(click the 7th flag from the left below)

My whole thing is, if it's not said in English, is it worth being said?