Here’s an idea for the new media folk: how about a map of the linguistic connections around the world? Not sure quite how the visualisation would work, but it’s inspired by this Shirky article, which reinterprets proximity in terms of linguistic connection.

In the next century, as countries increasingly trade more in information than hard goods, the definition of proximity changes from geographic to linguistic: two countries border one another if and only if they have a language they can use in common. Making it fly is left as an exercise for the reader. (Some thoughts: interpreted literally as border connections, the map is no longer planar; whopping great lines superimposed on a “standard” projection aren’t very satisfying; some recognition of numbers or percentages of speakers would be nice.) Me? I got a thesis to write…