English As Technology (EAT)

Proposition:

To create an electronic English tutor that is accessible to anyone wanting to learn English anywhere in the world, so that anyone who wants to can learn English*. This is going beyond ESL classes, reaching out to those who do not have access to ESL instruction, including peoples who have no written language, encouraging them (and everyone else in the world) to use English as their primary written language.

This would be done with Free Software designed to teach English to people who were completely illiterate and who could not understand spoken English, distributed as cell-phone based software that could be used when the cell phone did not have service. It follows that this would be written in Java for the Android platform.

"English As Technology":

"English As Technology" refers to the idea that the English language has been warped, twisted, beaten and molded into a language void of gender, formality, and other nuances found in more emotional languages, so that it has become an advanced community technology in and of itself*. Many objections to English being taught to everyone on the globe illustrate English's advantages as a specific communication tool:

• English is focused on concrete nouns more so than verbs.
• English tends towards reductionism and mechanism, heavily influenced by science and engineering.
• English is the language of colonialism, giving the speaker responsibility for commanding his own world.
• English objectifies other cultures, languages, and other types of communication tools, and integrates what it needs from those other cultures, just as an open source software application adapts to it's neighboring units.

Since English is a more or less specific type of communication technology compared to other more static languages, English can and should be modified to meet specific needs, and evolve with global needs specifically. The future of English is most likely simplified grammar combined with increased vocabulary:

• Plurals will probably disappear (Chinese for example does without plurals.) For example, I will probably say "My cat are fine." This will be able to be expressed in the following more specific ways: "my many cat are fine", "my multiple cat are fine," "my only cat is fine" etc. in so far as the English user wants to be more specific.
• Tenses will probably disappear. For example I will probably say "I go to the store." This could be be expressed in the following more specific ways if desired by the English user: "I go to the store yesterday," "I go to the store tomorrow", "I go to the store now" etc.
• The vocabulary of English is destined to explode as important concepts completely alien to English are grafted into the language. Examples include "Karma", "Siesta", and "Jeckso" (Chinese Joy-Luck.)

Why:

1. To provide ESL to all those kids who don't otherwise have the opportunity to study English.
2. To catalog and preserve other languages. If there's 1 universal language (English) instead of several (English, Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, French, etc.) than this will help preserve a much wider range of linguistic diversity, since no one will be expected to speak multiple common languages. Furthermore, it will be easier to catalog obscure dialects if all the cataloging is done in one language. Taishanese for instance is sometimes translated into Cantonese before it is translated into Mandarin, and Mandarin before English.
3. We need to go back and win the Opium Wars. The "Chinese" language is not the way. There are now more Chinese speaking web surfers than any other kind, and if we do not take aggressive steps to ensure the Internet is an English speaking place, we'll need to learn to type PinYin in order to write Chinese hieroglyphics that take magnitudes longer to learn how to use than phonetically spelled language. This will make the digital divide regarding information access magnitudes more extreme than what we have seen up to this point. Where our English ancestors failed to make English the language of Law and Science in China as they did India, we must now succeed with the rest of the non-English speaking world*. 
4. Free the world of post-modern hegemony: there are many people who would like to see the Africa's Kalahari Bushman and Pygmies kept in their technological place. Their poverty and dependence on local ecosystems stands as an idyllic example of "how things should be." In the end all this does is make these cultures more vulnerable to exploitation. Instead, when they get their hands on an old Android Cell phone, the whole culture will be able to learn English and of imminent threats from the outside world, and will be able to adapt accordingly. Furthermore, this post-modern hegemony actually resists new ideas from different culture since these ideas often threaten established ideas within the post modern left. Many of these suppressed ideas could lead to great technological innovations if they are released to the outside world. (In other words, this is the way to truly preserve antiquated cultures and global cultural diversity in general, teach everyone English.)
5. To create a universal tongue: English will not stay English as we know it long. English isn't what it was 100 years ago, and English 100 years ago isn't what it was 200 years ago, which is part of why it is such a useful technology. The fact that it is already prominent in three of the main future superpowers (USA, India, and EU), means that it's humanity's best basis for building a whole-Earth language.
6. To empower everyone to be a colonizer: not every language has built into it that a person should control his destiny. However this concept of self-determination is something everyone will need in order to maximize the use of their available resources in the future economy, and is something often lacking with non-English speaking cultures. Giving everyone the opportunity to learn English will give everyone the opportunity to survive.
7. To expand access to technology: English is an important first step. I have said many times that it would probably be faster to teach a Chinese child to write his personal journal in English than it would be to teach the child to use his own "native" written language. If some one's language has no written variation, it is certainly easier to teach English than to invent a totally new language. Further more the majority of technical information available on the Internet is written in English, as well as the majority of Wikipedia articles. English is the gateway to real participation in global technology development. Spreading English spreads the global cloud network.

* This was originally written soon after coming back from visiting my grandparents in Mexico, in of June 2008: http://progressive-positive.blogspot.com/2008/06/cellephony-anti-hegemony.html There I had heard of a vast undeserved markets of Mexican youth desperate to learn English, not to come to the USA, but to get jobs in Mexico. This was before the market dominance of Android and long before Khan Academy became the official way to prep for the SAT. 

Consider Public Radio International's interview with Chinese students: "Participants also say they consider debating in English to be easier than in Chinese. In English-language debates, you can be simpler and more direct, they say...”