Cultural literacy

I like the questions that the Cultural Literacy project at Demos is asking:

What skills do we need to read a changing world?
What are the key skills that we will need as cultures merge, meet and clash to a greater degree than ever before?
What can we learn from other disciplines and domains, like anthropology in how to approach this new environment?

I am very interested in interaction and the Cultural Literacy project gave a great link to a Wired article that discusses the dominance of English in cultural communication. One part of me wishes this wasn't the case, but when I read the article, I found myself thinking about other places, like the South Caucasus. Instead of culture going through a Russian channel in that part of the world, people are less likely to interact (Armenian, Azeri and Georgian are very different languages). I don't like the idea of having only one language hub, but do think having a few "biggies" - like the six UN languages - helps immensely. We need "hub and spoke" and "point to point" communication and we always will.

You can subscribe to the Demos projects and get regular updates through your feed reader. There must have been a real mastermind behind that site. It is truly amazing.