English Is a Completely Un-necessary Invention

I think, unfortunately, it is not possible to have a time machine.

But I wish for that.

That is maybe the first thing The Mayor should understand. When I said the words time machine, he immediately became interested. For him it was already a door opening into the Plaza, probably with a cartoon cave, a question mark, and somebody doing something completely unnecessary with great seriousness.

But for me, it was not only a joke.

I would like to have one.

Not for the future. The future makes me scared. If I had one choice, I would take the backward function. I would go back. At least to the time when my sister was still alive. Not to the last two years, because they were difficult and important, but difficult. Before that. Late 1990s, early 2000s. That was a good period. We were optimistic. There was no social media. There were good things. Enough technology, but not yet this feeling that every useful thing must update itself until it has forgotten why it existed.

Inside my time machine there would be rules.

The Mayor offered some possibilities. No touching buttons. If it still works, leave it alone. No unnecessary progress.

For me it is clear.

No unnecessary progress.

Some progress is only progress for the sake of progress. New software. New style. New version. And then suddenly there is no new function. Worse, many functions are gone. Then I ask: what was this progress for?

This is where I become maybe very Martin.

I remember old systems. Windows 95. Word. Excel. PowerPoint. Lotus 1-2-3. Lotus was better than Excel, by the way. We should not forget this. I remember MS-DOS, pen and paper, Total Commander, split screens, folders where you could actually see what you were doing. Things worked because somebody had understood the person sitting in front of the machine.

Today they reinvent the wheel and behave as if they invented the wheel.

But the wheel itself? Yes. That was necessary progress. I would have been impressed by the wheel. I am not against progress. I am against progress that walks into the room wearing a shiny jacket and removes the useful button.

If my time machine went too far back and landed in the Stone Age, I would first take coffee.

Then teletext.

The Mayor liked this too much, of course. He imagined teletext on a stone plate in a cave. Page number three. Weather: klink, klink, klink. This is exactly how it would work. Like The Flintstones. They had very good technology there. Birds as machines. Cars you push with your feet. Very good for fitness.

And then there was the English problem.

In the cartoon, I am sitting in a cave thinking: what if somebody invented a language called English?

This is a good Martin thought, because I like the English language. Especially when it is sung by Garbage. Then it is a beautiful language. At work, maybe less beautiful. But German at work is also not always beautiful. Maybe uglier.

If I had to explain English to a caveman, I would not start with “hello” or “food.” I would teach him:

“This is completely unnecessary.”

Because it is a full sentence. A difficult sentence. A proper task.

So there I am, sitting in my cave, and I have invented English.

This is already a problem, because nobody has asked for it.

The Mayor comes into the cave, still speaking fluent caveman, which is mostly “grun grun” with confidence. I stand up and try to explain that I have made a necessary invention.

But how do I explain English before English exists?

I point at myself.

I point at the wall.

I draw symbols.

I draw arrows.

I draw a question mark, which is the most important part.

Then I say my first official English sentence:

“English is a completely necessary invention.”

The Mayor looks at me.

He says something like: “Grun?”

And then I realise the problem. To explain my invention, I already need my invention. To teach him English, I first have to explain why he must learn English, but I can only explain that in a language he does not yet speak.

So I draw more arrows.

Then more question marks.

Then maybe a small pineapple, because at this point I think The Mayor understands pineapples better than grammar.

Still he looks at me like: Martin, this is completely unnecessary.

Which, of course, means the lesson is working.

The most important symbol in all of this is the question mark. The Mayor asked me if the symbols, arrows and question marks in the cartoon are how my brain works when I solve a problem. I said yes. The question mark is the most important. I do not know who invented the question mark, but it was a very good invention.

If I travelled into the future and met future people, the first thing I would ask them is:

Are you happy?

Not: do you have flying cars? Not: do you still work? Not even: do you still have proper buttons, although this is also important.

First I would ask if they are happy.

And if they showed me some amazing new machine, I would be curious how it works. But I would still ask: is the old one actually broken?

If the old machine still does good work, I would keep using it. The new machine can stand beside it. Ready to jump in if needed.

This is a very good system.

A caveman brought into a modern office would be shocked. Security pass. Coffee machine. Screens. People staring into boxes. No fire. Funny food. Microwave. No animals to hunt. No tools, no weapons.

But if I serve him good coffee, maybe it is okay.

When someone new comes into our office, the first machine I explain is always the coffee machine. It is the most important thing in the complete office.

Coffee rules the world.

I also still like proper calculators. Yes, I have a calculator on the PC and on the smartphone. But old calculators worked. Keyboards worked. Touchscreens are not always progress. In modern cars there is too much touch. Touch, touch, touch. And then it does not work properly. A keyboard is still better.

This is not nostalgia only. I do not think the past was better in every way. Society-wise, it is better to live in modern times. There are many achievements. Human rights and so on. In this case I am not conservative.

But teletext still.

Maybe the best way is to take the best from the past, the best from now, and the best from the future, and build your own package.

Everybody packs this package differently.

Mine has coffee, proper buttons, no unnecessary progress, English sung by Garbage, the backward function, teletext protected by German law if possible, and one very serious rule:

If it still works, please do not make it worse.