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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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The Digital Human

Factual: Science & Nature: Science & Technology

Aleks Krotoski explores the digital world

BBC Radio 4 LW

Digital Human: Series 6

The Digital Human: Series 6: Episode 2: Language

Factual

Factual: Science & Nature

Language

Episode 2

Episode 2: Language

Series 6

BBC Radio 4 - The Digital Human, Series 6, Language

Aleks Krotoski asks if language is a technology and how it has changed in the digital age.

Aleks Krotoski explores the digital world's impact on our original social networking technology - language.

We communicate with each other in more ways than ever and with an ever expanding range of devices and platforms. But they all piggy back on an earlier invention, our original social networking technology - language.

In this edition of the Digital Human Aleks Krotoski explores the idea of language as a technology itself and how people over the years have attempted to improve it; re-engineer it for maximum efficiency, or use it as a lever of social change. 

She speaks to Professor David Crystal about how we're living through a period of rapid language growth comparable to the renaissance or industrial revolution. Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel explains how we can consider language as a technology devised by natural selection while linguist Arika Okrent charts the attempts down the years by those who think they can perfect the function of language by devising their own.

Producer: Peter McManus.

The Digital Human: Series 6

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Aleks Krotoski explores what technology tells us about ourselves and the age we live in

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The Digital Human

Series 6

Episode 2: Language

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