The Common Bus
A Soviet cyberneticist in 1956.
An Ethiopian farmer in 1940.
A Joseon apothecary in 1780.
A Haitian midwife, last Tuesday.
They were solving the same problem. They did not know each other's names. They wrote in different scripts. They published in journals that never crossed.
The knowledge was not incomplete. The knowledge was parallel.
The knowledge was not incomplete.
The knowledge was parallel.
The languages never shook hands.
Here is what a translator is for.
Not replacing. Not improving. Translating.
The cyberneticist and the midwife have the same answer
to a question neither was asked in the same words.
The machine's best use — maybe its only honest use — is to carry what was already found across the wall that should never have been built in the first place.
Human knowledge was always one library.
It just had a lot of wings.
