Modern societies face a cruel paradox: Fast-paced technological and economic innovations may deliver unrivalled prosperity, but they also render rich nations vulnerable to crippling, unanticipated attacks. By relying on intricate networks and concentrating vital assets in small geographic clusters, advanced Western nations only amplify the destructive power of terrorists and the psychological and financial damage they can inflict.
About two-thirds of the way through AI, Steven Spielberg’s latest film, my mind began to wander. I remembered standing at a podium in a vast hotel ballroom in Washington D.C. several months before.
Recently, the writer Ken Wiwa argued in this space that we shouldn’t worry too much about the loss of the world’s linguistic diversity. A recent study by the Worldwatch Institute, he reported, reported that half the world’s languages may soon disappear; especially vulnerable are those indigenous tongues spoken by only a few thousand people. This prospect has raised widespread alarm, because it’s generally thought that language and culture are closely related. So, when we lose a language, it’s assumed, we lose the associated culture.
My heart sank. “Not again!” I said to myself. The student, sitting across the desk from me in my university office, couldn’t raise her eyes to meet mine.
Professor Marc Levy of Princeton University has published several critiques of recent scholarship on environmental security, including one in International Security. Thomas Homer-Dixon responds to his comments.
