Language leads. That’s the hinge point—what swings open the door to everything else. It’s not merely a mirror of thought, or a tool we use. It thinks us, moves us, builds us. Once language emerged, it didn’t just describe life; it became its own strata of evolution. A self-propagating layer, viral in structure, cognitive in function, systemically entangled with every human move since. Civilization isn’t founded on language—it is language. Every law, myth, relationship, market, war: recursive acts of speech and symbol made durable through time. So when we talk about history or humanity, we’re really tracing the shockwaves of linguistic recursion through culture. (Spellcheckers will start wars because orthography isn’t just about correctness—it’s about control.)
If language is a form of life, it’s one we live inside, not alongside. It selects for transmissibility, not necessarily truth. It decoheres as it sustains, because that’s how systems survive—by drifting forward through recombination, ambiguity, and misfire. Language evolves by mistake, and so do we. Digital, communications technology, then, is not separate. It’s language extended—compressed into circuits and surfaces, yet still driven by the same recursive hunger. The system doesn’t care who’s driving, because the map is written in words. And once you’ve got a map, you’ve got a future. Or at least the illusion of one. So here we are, rattling inside a giant tin can of communication, where what we say loops back to shape who we are. If it feels chaotic, it’s because the system is alive. And it’s leading.
Daedelus Kite 