Scottish author Irvine Welsh, whose 1993 novel Trainspotting ended up on the big screen courtesy of Danny Boyle, spoke out about the dangers of the internet, even citing Netflix hit drama Adolescence, at the first-ever “Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages” at London’s Barbican Centre on Thursday evening.
“With half of the world’s languages threatened to fall silent by the end of the century comes the first-ever U.K. festival ‘Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages,’ celebrating the power of language and art by highlighting endangered global and local languages,” read a preview for the event, made up of readings and other performances, panel discusses and workshops.
On Thursday evening, Welsh read from his new book Men in Love, which is written in the Edinburgh dialect. The author then joined a panel discussion entitled “The Art of Language,” along with poet Raymond Antrobus, who also performed works, simultaneously presented in British Sign Language by Pettra St Hilaire, Welsh singer Talulah, who added a musical touch to the event, and others.
”If language is divorced from culture, it becomes a weapon of imperialism, it becomes a weapon of control, it becomes a weapon of commerce,” Welsh argued.. “And it generally becomes about instruction. And my big concern is not just that certain languages are endangered, but language in general is endangered by the type of world that we’ve created [through] the technology and power structures we have created, and that we’re moving into a post-culture world.”
The author expressed concern that “language is eroded or negated to the sense that it’s decontextualized as a series of instructions,” warning that “the internet’s been a massive tool in this, because the internet not only decontextualizes knowledge that it gives us. It asks things from us from the state, corporations, and from power sources.”
Despite promises of the web as a place for exchange, “it’s not really about debate and discussion, discourse, community anymore,” Welsh declared. “That’s where real language and real culture thrive. So we have to watch that. We have to watch technology, and we have to watch the aims of people who control the technology.”
So what can be done? ”I think people should just get out more,” Welsh offered to laughs. “And read more.”
He then pointed to the Netflix hit series Adolescence to highlight the need for young people to read books and get integrated into local communities. “We’ve got a situation now where most people would probably have seen Adolescence. And you see the decline of empathy and [you see] decontextualized knowledge, particularly amongst young men,” he said. “It’s largely because of not reading. People should be reading books, they should be reading stories, they should be reading novels, because these are exercises in empathy. That’s what a novel is about, literally — putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.”
Welsh also argued that “what we’re being sold as multiculturalism isn’t. It’s globalization basically.” His warning: “We do have to be very judicious in the use of technology and remember what technology is set up to do. It’s set up to sell us things. … And then when we run out of money, it’s set up to control us through algorithms and through reducing us to stimulus-response machines on low-frequency instruction. So we have to really get back into communities.”
In press notes provided ahead of the event, Welsh had framed his take similarly. “Without language, we have no culture, and when we lose language, we lose culture,” he was quoted as saying in the notes. “We become androids of the tech age, slaves to algorithms, ready to obey instructions which are reduced only to symbols. The human experience leaks away as we bleed into serfdom.”
The “Voiced” festival runs through Saturday.
