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<blockquote data-quote="The Other Librarian" data-source="post: 1865306" data-attributes="member: 23655">My source on this is from the recent conference hosted by Google in CA.&nbsp; The Charlie Rose show held a symposium there of various internet/techie luminaries&nbsp; which was broadcast over the last 3 or so days.&nbsp; People like Bill Joy and CEOs of companies like Cisco, Google, Yahoo, Intel, Sun etc. (as well as some tech investment firms) all seemed to agree this was the case.&nbsp; China may not yet be there per capita, but is moving much more rapidly and efficiently than the US.&nbsp; Smaller countries like Korea and Singapore are already there.&nbsp; Note that they were speaking of a broad definition of broadband access, not just cable to homes, but internet cafes, wireless and cellular devices etc.&nbsp; They also agreed that Mandarin is poised to overtake English on the Web in term of volume of pages.&nbsp; One basic analogy used was that of the industrial revolution, which began in Britain, but it was the US that really &quot;ran with it&quot; and used its advances to become a behemoth economy/world power.&nbsp; Obviously a lot of my theory is speculation, just as much as it's speculation to cement English's final historical role just yet.&nbsp; But I think there is compelling evidence that a sea change may not be that far off, historically speaking.&nbsp; Like I said, maybe not in our lifetimes, but in the generations that follow.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="The Other Librarian, post: 1865306, member: 23655"] My source on this is from the recent conference hosted by Google in CA. The Charlie Rose show held a symposium there of various internet/techie luminaries which was broadcast over the last 3 or so days. People like Bill Joy and CEOs of companies like Cisco, Google, Yahoo, Intel, Sun etc. (as well as some tech investment firms) all seemed to agree this was the case. China may not yet be there per capita, but is moving much more rapidly and efficiently than the US. Smaller countries like Korea and Singapore are already there. Note that they were speaking of a broad definition of broadband access, not just cable to homes, but internet cafes, wireless and cellular devices etc. They also agreed that Mandarin is poised to overtake English on the Web in term of volume of pages. One basic analogy used was that of the industrial revolution, which began in Britain, but it was the US that really "ran with it" and used its advances to become a behemoth economy/world power. Obviously a lot of my theory is speculation, just as much as it's speculation to cement English's final historical role just yet. But I think there [I]is[/I] compelling evidence that a sea change may not be that far off, historically speaking. Like I said, maybe not in our lifetimes, but in the generations that follow. [/QUOTE]

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