This paper proposes information technology (IT) infrastructure is formulating a universal language. It dips into historic efforts to create a universal language via avant garde filmmaking and Gottfried Leibniz's characteristica universalis. It then explains how international standardization organizations are developing the globally unified infrastructural language through their regulations. The paper weighs the benefits and consequences of a universal language by looking into who IT infrastructure serves and who is excluded.

As Marshall McLuhan inferred in his 1964 essay, 'The Medium is the Message,' technology becomes inseparable from the messages it transmits, adding another layer of meaning to what is communicated; language, in turn, starts to be shaped around the tools that facilitate it. Thus, IT infrastructure is not just a tool to communicate, but is part of language itself.

Renée Reizman: http://reneereizman.com

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