Word order: The internet as the toy with a tin ear By Lewis Lapham

I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse - Emperor Charles V

But in which language does one speak to a machine, and what can be expected by way of response? The questions arise from the accelerating data-streams out of which we've learned to draw the breath of life, posed in consultation with the equipment that scans the flesh and tracks the spirit, cues the ATM, the GPS, and the EKG, arranges the assignations on Match.com and the high-frequency trades at Goldman Sachs, catalogues the pornography and drives the car, tells us how and when and where to connect the dots and thus recognise ourselves as human beings.
Why then does it come to pass that the more data we collect - from Google, YouTube, and Facebook - the less likely we are to know what it means?