Re: [FT][SG][DS] structure of the NAC

Jared spake thusly upon matters weighty: 
> Firstly, if 'race conflicts' are partially responsible for the US
Collapse
> as has been posited, might there be some amount of people leaving?
perhaps
> returning to the lands of their ethnic heritage, or at least other
> countries that aren't having so many problems.  While this may be
> temporary, it could change the population spread at the beginning of
the
> NAC formation (OK - I realize this one isn't too likely, but I thought
I'd
> throw it out.)

We're talking lots of people. They might move to Canada, but 
overseas? I think that part of the world was pretty exciting too.....
 
> Secondly, I really thing I have to agree with Tom's suggestion -
Electronic
> Docs and multi-lingual computer translation are going to be ubiquitous
by
> the time we're talking about.  If a region (say Brasil) wants to
handle
> internal affairs in Portuguese, that's great.  On the top NAC level,
> though, I think English would be the dominant language of government,
and
> so the representative that Brasil to the NAC Parliament, His Lordship
the
> Earl of Sao Paulo, Joao Ferreira de Almoco, would conduct business of
state
> in English.  I don't think this would be too difficult to imagine. 
Most
> people in goverment are well educated (scruples are a separate issue)
and
> more and more 'well educated' means multi-lingual.

And we may have small vocoders that can translate. You'd be 
effectively polylingual by having one of these. Maybe its a UN tech 
development - the multilator....(not mutilator, although it may have 
been named that in early versions due to its slaughtering of the 
spoken word). How a parliament of all the different nations may 
interact - all members wear an earbug. Each wears a throat mike. The 
throat mike takes their native language, encodes it into a 'universal 
language' (not necessarily understood by anything other than 
computers), and it is broadcast in an appropriate language to each 
other member of parliament simultaneously. Sort of a high-tech 
version of today. Multilators could be portable, but used in that 
format they'd pick up stuff at the throat mike and translate it into 
a language selected by the wearer which would then be spoken through 
a small speaker.  

Of course, as now, an effective multi-lingual speaker would have an 
asset in moving up in the gov't. But the huge # of languages out 
there would make it standard to use multilators. 

> Well, if you delivered services in any language required, you'd just
> extend that universal policy to Brazil.
> 
> Yep - with the understanding that their representative to Parliament
will
> beconducting business in English.

This isn't even necessary anymore. It could be done in the HoL but 
not in parliament. The HoL wouldn't do it because it had to enforce 
English, but because it was Tradition. The parliament, being more 
functionally oriented and less held to Tradition, would implement 
full multi-lingualism. 
 
> Good thoughts guys - is anyone collecting and collating these ideas
for a
> new history of the NAC?

I'm taking what Adrian wrote, some comments made, and (as Adrian 
said) coming up with a alternative version of some of the events. 
Once that comes out (probably end of the weekend), we'll try to put 
the result with feedback all together into something we can call the 
"Unofficial (unless Jon T says so) NAC history". 

We're kind of acting like the History of the Imperium Working Group 
did for the Traveller universe. 

And I'm looking forward to posting the resulting NAC history to my 
web page :) 
/************************************************
Thomas Barclay		     
Voice: (613) 831-2018 x 4009
Fax: (613) 831-8255

 "C makes it easy to shoot yourself in the foot.  C++ makes
 it harder, but when you do, it blows away your whole leg."
 -Bjarne Stroustrup
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