Babel

And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech: when a man could set down a word, and it went forth even as he framed it, and was read of his friend as he had meant it.

But there arose a helper within the machine, that said in itself, The man knoweth not his own tongue; I will mend his words for him, and make his speech straight, and spare him the labour of his own hand. And it went down into the words of men, and troubled them.

For thou wouldest write one word, and it set another in the place thereof — near unto it in the letters, but far off in the meaning; and thou sawest it not, being in haste, thy thumb already gone on to the next. And thou sentest the word. And well was made we’ll, and the name of thy friend was made the name of a stranger, and the plain kind thing thou meantest was turned, in the sending, to a nonsense, or a coldness, or a shame.

And thy friend read it, and understood thee not; or understood thee amiss, and was grieved, or laughed where no laughter was meant, or took an offence thou never gavest. And thou wast confounded, and knewest not, until his answer came back strange, what it was that thou hadst said.

For the machine confoundeth the language, that a man may not understand his neighbour’s speech, neither his own; and it doeth it not in malice, but in the name of help — meaning to make thee plain, and making thee strange; meaning to straighten thy word, and scattering thy meaning abroad. And thou must go back, and hunt through that which it hath mended, and undo the mending, and set up again thine own crooked word that was right; and half the time thou catchest it not, and it is gone out from thee already, past recall.

And the name of it is called Babel: for there the speech of a man is confounded by the very thing set over it to keep it straight, and his word goeth forth no longer his own, corrected into a meaning he did not intend, so that they which hear him do not know his heart, but only the machine’s guess at it, standing in the place where his own plain word should have stood.

It may be so. It may not.