Something everyone can understand

Imagine a global society in the future where technology has advanced enough to produce a viable, universal translater. Everyone around the world can communicate with each other without having to learn any kind of new language thanks to two small implants, one that acts as a broadcaster and the other as a receiver. Whatever a person is saying gets transmitted out and then picked up by whomever is in earshot (which of course could span miles!) and subsequently translated into a language the person who is "listening" can understand. Sounds great, eh? What kinds of consequences could such a technology have?

In this futuristic society, the transmitting part of the technology depends on reading the muscular movements of the speaker alone, and no actual sound is required. Over time, as the popularity and availability of the implants increased, people became so dependant on them and got them at such an early age, the need for actually producing sounds diminished. Many people never even developed their vocal chords, as they never had any use for them in their life whatsoever. Communication had become almost strictly technological, and the transmitter could be easily fine-tuned to broadcast to a wider range, or even limited to an individual (their form of whispering)...even stereos and televisions (or, more appropriately, their future counterparts) transmitted sounds without sound in every language. Though none spoke, however, many people had become pretty good at whistling.

As strange as it sounds to us, this future world had an incredible international scene, thanks in no small part to the universal translator. Once people from different parts of the world could understand each other, a remarkable and unexpected thing happened: they resolved most differences and figured out how to get along. Commerce, technology, government, education, medicine, and the collective knowledge base of our planet increased exponentially. From the point of view of an alien, things seemed well in the world.

The domestic scene, however, was far from ideal. There developed a great rift between the haves and the have-nots, moreso than ever in history, due ironically to a lack of communication. Those who couldn't afford the implants were pushed lower and lower in class, until they were eventually shuffled under the rug by the powers that would be. As one may have predicted, it was only a matter of time before these surpressed peoples, or "talkies", as they were called, began to organize and revolt. They used crude weapons and guerilla strategies that revolved around high-pitched sounds, exploiting a weakness their enemy developed through sustained use of their "precious technology". Unfortunately, the universal translator did not speak Pissed Off Lower Class.

Well, as fantastic (and wildy fictional) as this may sound, the aforementioned technology is already making an appearance in a primitive form. Read on:

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