[gear54rus]

A related thought: I wonder if we will some day live in a world where translation is not required. Where everyone knows English and has no trouble using English tools and consuming English content.

Same goes for measurement systems (metric), time, currency, and other formats. I reckon it would simplify our lives greatly and spare us the trouble of dealing with 1000s of encodings, multi-byte strings and different text directions.

Technological landscape is the only place where such unity between nations is possible, I tend to think that this is what should be pursued instead of translate-everything-everywhere approach.

[sambeau]

What makes you think it won't be Chinese?

[gear54rus]

The fact that English is easier to learn :)

[Ralfp]

It's only "fact" because you are accustomed to latin alphabet and you are native speaker of language that was either latin-influenced, shares root with English, or you were taught it since you were child.

The last one actually is sometimes called "little chinese boy" in circles of language tutors due to how young children can easily pick up languages different from their native one due to lack of bias. My cousin thats 5 years old now is already dual-languaged due to her parents exposing her to their native languages at all times.

[gear54rus]

My original point also has a lot to do with single-byte encoding(s), as you may have noticed. Will we really want to change ASCII to encode something different than it does now? Will we throw away all our programming languages as well? I don't think so.

[kiiski]

I doubt ease of learning really has anything to do with the current popularity of English. As soon as the USA stops being the dominant power in the world, English will start losing ground as well.

edit: Looking at the EF English Proficiency Index[1], English doesn't seem quite as universal as it feels like in the Anglosphere anyway.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EF_English_Proficiency_Index