Babel Language and Social media

For this project I will be reinterpreting Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s painting “Tower of Babel”. This image represents the fable of people building a tower to get closer to god. God seeing this then destroys the tower and splits the peoples unified language in to many others, this was used to describe to mainly children why people around the world have different languages, and answers the questions that if we where all created by God in his own image why is it that we speak different languages.

Growing up in a very strict religious household I was always surrounded my religious iconography and was my first encounter with religious artwork. As I have grown older and given up my religion in favour of science, I have often wondered why is it that religion still has a big part in our society when so many people are atheists. This work will be my reinterpretation of this religious painting by looking at social media as the new religion.

The work will consist of a wooden panel 114cm x 155cm (size of the original tower of babel) and digitally printed onto that will be the code of the digital image from a major website where most people get their information from (WIKIPEDIA), the code will also have words that have been corrected by MS word to make up the text of the image. It is this text that I will be focusing on for this piece, as it is the new digital language.

Digital language is becoming the new standard as we now use social networking sites and handheld devices as platforms to communicate with one another. Ananiadou states, “In 2010, 30.1 million adults in the UK (approximately 60%) used the Internet almost daily, which is almost double the estimate of 2006.” (Ananiadou et al. 2011:13)

The words that appear in the text will be visually represented in moving image form as a video made from images associated with the words will be projected onto the panel.

The reason I have chosen to use the words themselves from the autocorrected text rather than images that represent them is to represent the last of the social networking sites that rely on text rather than image, for example sites like FaceBook have now become increasingly less popular due to people preferring to convey an idea or emotion or status or even reflect their virtual selves through images and image dominated social networking sites such as Instagram, Tumblr and Pinterest to name a few.

Social Networking sites have always been a place to project oneself in a digital realm or a virtual reality. The profiles that we create on these sites are only snapshots of our lives, and ourselves they show very little about who a person is or what experiences they have had in order to make them who they are. It is this snapshot of someone that has already become a part of Virtual Reality so it is only natural for people to immerse themselves fully using devices such as Google Cardboard or Oculus Rift. Social Networking sites where a way of communicating with others via CMC (Computer-mediated Communication) we interact and message friends, family and co-workers in this way.  

CMC come with its own language we as a people have created shortcuts and abbreviations for words for texting and instant messaging that have become a part of our everyday vernacular for example, LOL (laugh out loud), M8 (mate), GTG (got to go) and B4 (before) to name a few. It is this integration of ‘text speak’ into our everyday conversations that have become a form of communication accommodation, Gamon describes this accommodation is his report as ‘the general observation that in conversations people tend to non-consciously converge to one another’s communicative behavior.’ (Gamon 2011) and goes on to state that ‘Linguistic style is also known to be, for the most part, generated and processed non-consciously’. (Gamon 2011)

This would imply that this accommodation is a subconscious reaction to our current communication styles for example Gamon’s study was based around Twitter users as he states that ‘Twitter is a fertile ground for dyadic interactions.’ (Gamon 2011) and goes on to state ‘[The] conversations are not face-to-face and do not happen in real-time.’ (Gamon 2011)

This would lead me to believe that the lack of face-to-face interactions has helped cement this accommodation as CMC across the whole Internet as the new language, where English is the most commonly written language.

In another study Ananiadou found that ‘19.1 million UK households (73%) had an Internet connection. It was found that Internet use is linked to various socio-economic and demographic indicators. For example, 60% of users aged 65 or over had never accessed the Internet, compared to 1% of those aged 16 to 24.’ (Ananiadou et al. 2011:13) and goes on to confirm the numbers of written English online by stating ‘The English Internet the most used in the world – only the Chinese Internet comes anywhere close, with 445 million users. The third most popular language on the Internet is Spanish, with about 153 million users.’ (Ananiadou et al. 2011:14) This report confirms that fact that the written English language online has become it’s own unique form of CMC where text speak is the common tongue.

As mentioned previously it is social media that I feel plays the biggest part of this new language and I feel that it creates a division between generations much in the way that the Tower of Babel collapsed and created linguistic divisions, social media has created linguistic division amongst generations of people.

The future of social interactions and dialogue between people communicating via social networking sites is uncertain as the popularity for sites like Twitter and Facebook fall out of favor with younger generations due to their main focus being on written conversation rather than imagery as Lauciute writes ‘the original idea of Facebook was to enable users to share visual content, but somehow the focus turned towards typed communication.’ (Lauciute
 2013) and goes on to confirm the younger generations preference to visual communication by stating ‘Stimulation through images is just easier [for them] to access.’ (Lauciute
 2013)

Facebook has tried to combat this mass exodus from younger generations by investing in VR (Virtual Reality) technologies as they predict that this will become the new platform for CMC, Guian-illanes confirms this by stating ‘Facebook has actually invested $2B in the Oculus Rift project, an amount that begins to demonstrate how essential this new addition to virtual reality technology might be in the future of social media.’ (Guian-illanes 2015) and goes on to confirm this idea that VR will be used for CMC by stating ‘Individuals will have an even more compelling way to entertain themselves and stay in contact with one another. (Guian-illanes 2015)

Image From: http://www.tubefilter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/facebook-vr.jpg

This new form of CMC created through VR means that generations will no longer communicate through face-to-face interactions, Guian-illanes posits this idea by stating ‘The lack of physical embodiment in virtual settings simulates feedback without limitations. This increasing blur between the virtual and the real is redefining the way individual humans adapt to act on a social level.’ (Guian-illanes 2015) this means that this will fundamentally change the way in which people interact socially with each other as well as how we shall communicate.