Alt title: The problem with folk music

Any singer or songwriter, no matter how talented, tends to write in only one language.

Sure, Taylor Swift’s timeless lyrics are heartfelt and poignant—and don’t you dare say otherwise!—, but is the person in rural China really getting the full message? The full intention?

So much of our art and our humor and our music is cultural. It’s impossible for it to transcend boundaries and politics.

This is one of the reasons that I fell in love with electronic music at the age of 11. No singers means no lyrics. No lyrics means that no matter who you are, you are able to interpret the music in exactly the same way. No references, no inside jokes, just frequencies hitting human ear drums.

The allure of a truly universal language has been a consistent theme in human history. The Tower of Babel parable tells us that the only reason we fight is that we don’t understand each other. And worse still? There was a magical, utopian time when we all did. How many of our disagreements today are based on simple misunderstanding?

Douglas Adams’ Babel Fish in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a wonderful idea: what if we could universally translate any language to any other in real time?

And now, we’re at a point where an upcoming AirPods version (or whatever Sam Altman and Jony Ive are creating) will have instantaneous, AI-powered universal translation. This isn’t distant sci-fi, this is imminent.

We'll take our headphones into Mongolia and instantly understand everything that’s being said.

How much will this increase our sense of shared global humanity? How many disagreements will be mitigated? How many Russian анекдоты will we suddenly get?

Or maybe, we’ll just find out how bad Vogon poetry truly is.