Updated: 8/6/2008; 10:27:34 PM.
Mark O'Neill's Radio Weblog
        

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Last month, Sean McGrath made a compelling case that knowledge of multiple programming languages is now less important than knowledge of libraries and platforms. In programming, languages are less important than they used to be. Even in spoken languages, I've noticed that the "library" of technical jargon, which although based on English is now largely language independent, allows for a lot of commonality between different languages across the world. For example, yesterday I had a conversation with a group of people whose native language is not English, where the worlds "Fielding REST" were used, neatly expressing a concept that's language independent. The words "Fielding REST" could be seen as being part of the underlying technical "platform" or "library", which is language independent, not limited to English. In the technical world, maybe it's knowledge of this "platform" or "library" that's most important, not necessarily knowledge of multiple languages. 

But this only goes so far. On Monday, I scrolled down through the online Irish Times and the last story caught my eye. It looked like a mistake, because the headline didn't seem to match the text.

So, I read the text of the article. It reports that the Irish Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, had used the Irish language to read out the text of a new law being presented to the Seanad (Senate) in Ireland. This new law would allow any European Union country to monitor the emails, phone calls, and text messages of people in Ireland, without permission from the Irish government, if it was for the vague reason "to prevent an immediate and serious threat to public security". My immediate thought was "how can this be right down at the bottom of the news", below a story about some people who are travelling to Ireland to talk at a road safety conference. Indeed, the next day, at the foot of the news page, there was a story about how a civil liberties group was worried about the new law. The next day, nothing. I can only imagine the reaction in the US if a similar law was proposed...

But, the law was read out in Irish, not English. Most people from Ireland, myself included, know cupla focail (a few words) of Irish, since it's taught in Irish schools, although only some of us (such as Antoin over at eire.com) are fluent. But, I wonder how many could follow a speech about lawful interception of emails, phone calls, and text messages. Even armed with the underlying "library" or "platform" of technical jargon, which is language neutral, you must still understand a lot of Irish to understand such a speech.

So was the law read out in the Senate in Irish in order to create "insecurity through obscurity"? I wonder. But, I think it shows that, in the spoken word, language is still important, and I think it's an interesting counterpoint to Sean McGrath's article about computer languages.

[ By the way, I would get around this new law by using Vonage, since it now issues Dublin numbers. I doubt if Vonage will be covered under this law, since their infrastructure is in the US, but I may be wrong.]


9:36:37 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2008 Mark O'Neill.
 
March 2006
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
      1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8 9 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30 31  
Feb   Apr


Vordel




Subscribe to "Mark O'Neill's Radio Weblog" in Radio UserLand.

Click to see the XML version of this web page.

Click here to send an email to the editor of this weblog.