The Tower of Babel, according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built at the city of Babylon. According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, participated in the building. The people decided their city should have a tower so immense that it would have "its top in the heavens."
However, the Tower of Babel was not built for the worship and praise of God, but was instead dedicated to the glory of man, to "make a name" for the builders: "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." (Genesis 11:4). The Book of Genesis then relates how God, displeased with the builders' intent, came down and confused their languages. The result was that the people of Babylon scattered throughout the earth.
Fast forward to 2010, when technology, aided by a profusion of satellite and fiberoptic communications advances, has brought the world back together with the ability to communicate instantly anywhere on the globe via the Internet. Has technology enabled man to resurrect another Tower of Babel? Are we to repeat biblical history? My preacher posed this question yesterday at Sunday services.
To quote George Santayana (1863–1952), philosopher and essayist, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Translation services, hoping to counteract the fragmentation of the world's languages, are error-prone and fail to deal with colloquialisms and nuance. Meanwhile, the Internet's governing body is advancing a plan to allow domain names in all languages, instead of just using just the English alphabet. So far, human effort, even in the Internet era, has failed to overcome the confusion of languages attributed to ancient Bablyon.
Therefore, Delivra continues to receive inquiries about support for email content in languages other than English. Our software is able to send mail using the UTF-8 character set, which represents all of the world's langauges. Until mankind returns to a universal language, that will have to do!
Neil Berman | CEO & President
Powered by Compendium
Comments for Tower of Babel