The notion of “viral ideas” is a central theme in Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash. And the “birther” nonsense is a near-perfect illustration:
“We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information. The only thing that keeps these things from taking over the world is the Babel factor — the walls of mutual incomprehension that compartmentalize the human race and stop the spread of viruses.”
A world where all, or most, of the people speak English would be a dangerous thing indeed.
I reread Snow Crash (and Cryptonomicon) every couple of years. Many of the ideas in SC seem more relevant than ever.
A common language would allow for a unrestricted flow of ideas, whether good or bad. But given the current circumstances with social media as the medium of flow, bad ideas have outnumber the good ones by orders of magnitude.
Neal was right back in 1992 and I think I need to pay a revisit to Snowcrash.