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From: amtrs@sun.leeds.ac.uk (R Shaw)
Subject: Re: UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE IN INTERNET?
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Date: Thu, 14 Aug 1997 15:47:11 +0100 (BST)
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Mike Wright wrote:
> 
> Hans Breuer wrote:

> >
> > YES! A last someone realized :). However, according to an American
> > sociologist: "the real danger of the Internet is that sooner
> > or later
> > everyone will think like a North American"....
> 
> Hmm. Which "North American" is that? Pat Robertson,
> Martin Luther King,
> Jerry Garcia, Jesse Helms, Carol Mosely-Braun, Allen Ginsberg, Michael
> J. Fox, Bella Abzug, B.B. King, Diego Rivera, Woody Guthrie, Cesar
> Chavez, Newt Gingrich, Grace Slick, Louis Farrakhan, Strom Thurmond,
> Malcom X, Frank Zappa, Bill Gates, Mitch Kapor, Captain Crunch, John
> Steinbeck, Alfred Jitsudo Ancheta, W.E.B. DuBois, Al Capp, Joan Baez,
> Charlton Heston, Richard Gere, Kurt Vonnegut, Mike Wright, ...?
> 
> Gosh, I guess we *are* all identical in our thinking!

Well, what do they have in common? They presumably
all expect clean tapwater, food on shelves irrespective
of season, and other modern conveniences.

They share certain assumptions about a typical
lifestyle, not shared by much of the world.
I doubt any of those you named regularly
eat horses or dogs.

Mind you, most of what north americans share is
also shared by we British, and only slightly less
by the other Europeans. So I've got no strong
objections to cultural convergence, which
will wash away the indian caste system and
other iniquities, as long as you leave the
important things alone; warm beer and a
game of cricket on a sunday afternoon.
 
-- 
They both savoured the strange warm glow of being
much more ignorant than ordinary people, who were
only ignorant of ordinary things.
Terry Pratchett, 'Equal Rites'
