In "Translate" his latest essay, Belgian philosopher and jurist François Ost, sings the praises of multilingualism, the one alternative to the hegemony of global English.

Misunderstanding - let's see now: Most of the time, we consider it a blight, an insidious worm that spoils the fruit of communication. On closer scrutiny, however, it turns out to be an opportunity, just as a mistake is an opportunity for learning in that it makes us cross-examine ourselves, correct ourselves and progress. If everything we said were instantaneously grasped, if we got one another's message "loud and clear" every time, we would only need to talk once, and there would be no need to have a(nother) word with one another.

The same goes for languages. There are roughly 6,000 of them around. Some are neighbours, sisters, cousins, others complete strangers, light-years away. So we are inclined to think that if there were only one single clear-cut, perfect language in which things were reflected exactly as in a verbal mirror, everyone could understand everyone else effortlessly, and we would elude the catastrophe of Babel: atomisation and the inconsolable misfortune of being condemned to the treachery of translation. Well, no. This lone language, this scrap of the dream of the Ursprache or "original language" - "the very one in which God and Adam conversed in Paradise" - would be a deadly bore. It would nip every conversation in the bud and put quite a damper on the "potentialities of meaning".

So long live Babel! Long live the sin of presumption that tempted men into building a tower as high as the sky, in punishment for which God "scattered them abroad upon the face of all the earth" and "confounded the language of all the earth" - that very curse is a blessing in disguise.

The "One Laptop per Child" (OLPC) scheme, which has sent over a million US$100 laptops to children in the developing world, has been criticised by researchers who found that, unless they are introduced with care, they become little more than distracting toys in the classroom.

The study, conducted in Ethiopia, revealed that students wanted more content on the laptops and teachers were not adequately trained on how to make use of them.

But Matt Keller, OLPC's director of Europe, the Middle East and Africa, rejects the criticisms. He says that when children take the laptops home they extend the school day. "When a child uses a laptop, he constructs and engages with it in a way that is far more dynamic and interactive than anything that he does at school."