"the World at Your Fingertips" by Robert Mc Crum

"The World At Your Fingertips" by Robert McCrum starts off with a quote by Bill Gates, who was the chairman of Microsoft in December of 2000, stating that he believes that the internet is so powerful that it will far surpass the power of electricity, the automobile, and the telephone combined. McCrum starts this chapter off with this quote, I believe, because he is comparing the immense power of the internet to the power of the English language in the late 1900s. They both are rather newly founded but everyone can see how influential they both are becoming.

The chapter continues with multiple events where the English language was pushing to be the most dominant language. "From the eighteenth century there had always been anxieties about America's 'corruption' of Britain's cultural life, usually focused on language, neologisms like 'belittle' and 'hospitalize'." France was the country the most bothered by America gaining power and were anti-American. They tried to do little things to keep them from being too influential, such as they wouldn't allow the Americans to construct an amusement park in France named "Eurodisney" so they changed the name to "Disneyland". They also enacted a law making it mandatory to use the French language in all meetings, seminars, conferences, French-sponsored films, and in all transactions that were to take place in France.

I believe countries, such as France, were so anti-American, because just like people nowadays, they were resistant to change. When they noticed another country gaining power they felt intimidated and went into defensive mode. They took the rise of America as an attack and therefore a fight for power became apparent. I believe neither country had mal-intentions, they were just in survival mode.