Primordial soup chaos or the birth of a newsletter

If there is something I have learned during the last two months is that solving a Rubik’s cube is really difficult but little by little you get better at it. Or rather, you start to understand your way around the cube, regardless of your results.

I still haven’t solved mine, just as I haven’t figured out how I will continue with this newsletter. However, I am very excited about it.

Why? Because writing helped me understand that I didn’t want to be a translator for a company, nor a language teacher in a classroom full-time despite the fact that I enjoy both activities.

At some point, I realised that I was doing a lot of crazy stuff with the languages I learned (English and French) and even if I was already aware of their role in my life, I hadn’t, until now, taken the time to reflect on the notion of my own multilingual agency A.K.A., my own capacity for action through different languages.

Not seeing this but also not understanding that languages were the gateway to a lot of information and ideas that occupy my mind today was dragging me down and nerfing my desires for creation.

I failed. And I failed A LOT. But I won’t talk about that, at least not today. For now, I rejoice because I took a step forward and I did it conscientiously.

I sat, or rather walked, with my thoughts and observed how we are on the brink of something fundamentally new. Not only because of AI, but because we are living through a cognitive revolution like we have never seen before, and it’s only getting started. This, and many other personal and societal facts led me to a deep reflection on how to tackle my own work:

Actions.

Will.

Intention.

Everything pointed to the concept of agency on different levels. From the surface exposed to the outer world to the depths of my thoughts.

Taking action for my project is something rather obvious, you might think. In my case, I understood that I shall view myself as a multilingual human agent.

If you follow the news, you probably know that, by the time this newsletter is being written (November 2024), millions of AI agents are about to be deployed by the Tech Lords. Artificial autonomous agency is not a laughing matter and I believe it will have its consequences on the way we interact as a species.

It is not a matter of emotion, empathy or even comprehension. The truth is that humanity is entering an era where machines can talk back and reason with human language and this needs to be followed closely.

How are languages going to evolve? What are the hybrid dialogues between men and machines going to look like? Writing, reading, learning… how are we going to ensure that our basic human fonctions make progress in accordance with our nature and our potential?

What are we going to do to transition properly to a world without phones, or at least with reduced screen time? How can we make the best out of intercultural discourse and practices? What is the future of social media? How can we make sure that our voice is heard and that our creations are treated properly in different languages?

As you can see, this primordial soup is boiling with tons of questions. As this newsletter grows, I will be talking about these topics and hopefully, explaining with more clarity what I want to achieve.

For now, have in mind that the world is changing in exponentials, the entire planet is getting more and more interconnected through the internet and human magnifying glasses are required in order to keep track of multilingual practices and the discoveries they might help advance. It doesn’t hurt to think outside the box either ;)

Thank you for reading and see you next time!

PS: I explore multilingual human agency through my socials in order to provide examples about my work as well.