Volume 6, Issue 5, January 1997

Tools of Communication

Words are tools of communication. They are conveyed to others by means of voice, paper and electronic technology. Our technology is making available to vast numbers of people information, ideas, propaganda, declarations, commentaries and all sorts of conversation readily and quickly. Computer communications to date has tended to dwell more on the methods than the content. The technology makes transmissions easy, but it does not relieve people of the challenge of expressing themselves comprehensively. We must not allow the machinery to get in the way of communicating as well as we can.

Short of being absolutely false, much of the information relayed on computer systems is undeveloped, incomplete, trivial, or out of context. As computer journalist Howard Rheingold has remarked, the Internet incorporates "the most chaotic collection of information in history."

But, the continuing advance in communications technology has given humankind a powerful tool for the betterment of our condition. However, the benefits of this boon are unevenly spread around the world. We have the means to build the "global village." Will it be intelligent, helpful, peaceful, or divided against itself?

With this in mind I have translated the Old Testament teaching myth of the Tower of Babel, written by the earliest biblical writer, the woman known as "J", into present-day expression.

"Now all the earth had one language, one and the same words. And as the people link from the north, the south, the east and the west there came into being the Internet. 'We can bring ourselves together', they said. 'Come let us make even better chips, design them ingeniously'. And they had monitors to look at and keyboards to record.

Then they said, 'If we link ourselves together we can build one community with a communication system with its furthest reach in Utopia -to arrive at fame. Without a cipher we're restricted, scattered over the face of the earth'.

The Lord interfaced with the system to watch the method the children of humankind were bound to build, with their computers attached like leaves upon the tree. 'They are one people,' the Lord said, 'and they speak with one dialect. They conceive this between them, and it leads to where no boundary exists to what they will have an effect on. Come, let us interlace between them, baffle their tongues until each is a scatterbrain to their friend.'

From there the Lord scattered them over the whole face of the earth; the communication became unbound.

Therefore it is called trivia because their tongues were confused by the Lord. Scattered by the Lord from there they arrived at the ends of the earth."

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"Religion NOW" is published in limited edition by the Rev. Ross E. Readhead, B.A., B.D., Certificate of Corrections, McMaster University, in the interest of furthering knowledge and participation in religion. Dialogue is invited and welcomed.