الاقتصاد قوام اللغات

TT

الاقتصاد قوام اللغات

يقترن تناولُ موضوع اللغة بالثقافة عادةً، وهو اقتران طبيعي باعتبار أن اللغة هي مكونٌ من مكونات الثقافة ومقوم من مقوماتها. بل إن اللغة هي محدد من محددات البناء الرمزي لهوية أي مجتمع.
وتاريخياً الحضارة الأكثر صيتاً واتساعاً وشيوعاً تمتلك أكثر من غيرها من الحضارات قدرة على جعل لغتها تهيمن على العالم. ولا تنسى في ذات السياق أن القيمة العالمية لأي لغة إنما تقدَّر بعدد الناطقين بها.
إنَّ مقاربة اللغة اليوم هي أبعد من أن تكون مقاربة لغوية أنثروبولوجية محضة كما كانت. ففي التاريخ الثقافي للشعوب كانت اللغات تندرج ضمن التنوع الثقافي للإنسانية وتعد اللغة من مكونات الهوية، التي تحرص أي أمة على المحافظة عليها من الذوبان والانصهار والتلاشي.
أما اليوم فالأمر عرف تغييرات في المقاربة، إذ إنَّ الصلة بين مكانة اللغة في العالم وقيمة الاقتصاد قوية جداً. مع العلم أنه ولعقود طويلة ارتبطت اللغة بالعلم، بمعنى أن الذي يبتكر أكثر تهيمن لغته على العالم أكثر من غيره.
طبعاً الفصل بين العلم والاقتصاد في هذا السياق صعب، لأن الاقتصاديات الكبرى المهيمنة في العالم اليوم تكتسب قوتها من أهميتها في مجال العلوم التجريبية والابتكار والاختراع. ومن ثم فإنَّ اللغة التي تعرف سنداً اقتصادياً قوياً هي أفضل من غيرها من اللغات في هذا الجانب. وإذ نركز على التدقيق في هذا البعد تحديداً فلكي نؤكد ضمنياً أيضاً أنْ لا تفاضلية بين اللغات والثقافات، كما تؤكد مضامين حقوق الإنسان والدراسات الأنثروبولوجية، ولكن الفارق يبدأ عندما يدعم الاقتصاد بصيته وابتكاراته وأسواقه ومناخ الأعمال فيه وسبل تحقيق أحلام الثروة فيه، ساعتها تكتسي اللغة أهمية مخصوصة وتصبح عنصراً من عناصر القوة ذاتها يستفيد منها الاقتصاد ليكسب عدد أكبر من الناطقين.
إذن قوة اللغة من قوة الاقتصاد وانتشارها من انتشار السلع، والمنتجات، والأجهزة، والاختراعات. بمعنى آخر يصبح الاقتصاد مصدرَ جذبٍ للغة الصانعة للاقتصاد القوي.
وهنا يمكننا طرح سؤال بسيط: هل اللغة تسهم في صياغة اقتصادنا؟
أظن أنَّ الجواب هو نعم.
فاللغة كما نعلم هي حاملة لنظرة الناطقين بها للعالم بشكل عام.
كما أنَّ الحديث عن الناطقين بلغة ما لا يعني أنَ اللغة لا تتعدى النطق والكلام، بقدر ما هي نظام تفكير ورؤية وتصور وتمثلات وحتى سلوك أيضاً، لأنَّ اللغة فعل في العالم كذلك.
من هذا المنطلق نفهم علاقة اللغة الإنجليزية بالعلم، ونفهم أكثر لماذا بريطانيا كانت مهد الثورة الصناعية، وكيف أنَّ اللغة كانت رافعة وداعمة لظهور الحركة العلمية.
وكلما كانت اللغة أكثر دقة وعلاقة بالعالم المحسوس، فإن أهلها كانوا إلى العلم أقرب.
وليس سراً القول أيضاً إنَّ اللغة هي مرآة العقلية، ومن خلالها يمكن التلصص على الخيال وأنظمة التفكير، وبواسطة هذه المرآة يمكن تحديد إلى أي مدى يمكن لمجتمع ما أن يقدم اقتصاداً قوياً ومتحركاً. فاللغة التي تعكس دقة الناطقين بها وتكشف عن تنشئة تقوم على التعويل على الذات والاستقلالية والإبداع والثقة بالذات المتوازنة والمؤمنة بالعمل، هي التي تنتج مجتمعات تعيش في اقتصاديات خالقة للثروة ومشبعة لتوقعات الناس.
ما الذي جرَّنا للحديث عن اللغة والاقتصاد؟
اليوم القمة الـ18 للمنظمة الفرنكفونية العريقة جداً والتي يبلغ عمرها الآن أكثر من نصف قرن باعتبار أنها تأسست عام 1970، وتضم قرابة 80 دولة عموماً. ولعلَّ عقد هذه الدورة الـ18 اليوم في تونس، وتحديداً في جزيرة جربة الساحرة بجمالها وثقافتها، مناسبة جيدة لإثارة العلاقة بين نشر اللغة اليوم وبين ما يمكن أن يجمع بين الدول الفرنكفونية من مشاريع اقتصادية وبرامج تعاون كبيرة وقوية، تفتح الآفاق وتلبّي حاجات اقتصادية ومالية مهمة.
فالمنظمة التقت حول لغة هي اللغة الفرنسية، ومستقبل هذه اللغة هو في ارتباط وثيق وعضوي بما يمكن أن توفره هذه اللغة من آفاق تعاون ومصالح بين الدول الناطقة بها. لذلك يبدو لنا أنَّ اختيار تخصيص منتدى اقتصادي في فعاليّات القمة يحضره القادة الفرنكفونيون هو اختيار موفق من ناحيتين: الناحية الأولى تتمثل في أنَّ الاقتصاد هو ما يجمع بين كل أشكال التكتلات، سواء القائمة على الانتماء إلى قارة واحدة أو إلى دين واحد أو لغة واحدة أو جغرافيا واحدة... أما الآخر فإنَّ الرسالة هي أنَّ كل أنواع التكتلات تحيا وتزدهر وتصبح قوية وأكثر قوة عندما تقوم على المصالح الحيوية، والاقتصاد أهم مصلحة للعلاقات والتبادلات.
فالاقتصاد قوامُ اللغات وكل شيء.



Qatar, Kuwait Condemn Houthi Attacks on Saudi Arabia in Calls with FM

Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah during a visit to Washington in September 2026. (Getty Images/AFP)
Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah during a visit to Washington in September 2026. (Getty Images/AFP)
TT

Qatar, Kuwait Condemn Houthi Attacks on Saudi Arabia in Calls with FM

Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah during a visit to Washington in September 2026. (Getty Images/AFP)
Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah during a visit to Washington in September 2026. (Getty Images/AFP)

Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah received on Tuesday separate phone calls from Qatar's Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani and Kuwait's Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Jarrah Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah.

The ministers discussed the latest developments in the region and renewed their condemnation of the heinous attacks by the Houthi terrorist militia targeting civilian facilities in Saudi Arabia.

The calls also covered regional developments and the importance of continued efforts, coordination, and consultations among their countries to strengthen joint Gulf cooperation and preserve regional security and stability.


Why AI Makes Computer Worms Harder to Stop

Letters spelling "AI," a keyboard and a robotic hand in this illustration created on September 23, 2026. (Reuters)
Letters spelling "AI," a keyboard and a robotic hand in this illustration created on September 23, 2026. (Reuters)
TT

Why AI Makes Computer Worms Harder to Stop

Letters spelling "AI," a keyboard and a robotic hand in this illustration created on September 23, 2026. (Reuters)
Letters spelling "AI," a keyboard and a robotic hand in this illustration created on September 23, 2026. (Reuters)

Anthropic's warning that AI-powered "worms" could soon spread across smart gadgets is the latest in a series of studies showing how artificial intelligence could supercharge self-spreading malware.

A computer worm is malicious software that spreads between devices on its own.

In June, Nicolas Papernot, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto, led a team that built a prototype AI worm using freely available AI models.

Papernot, who has signed an open letter with recommendations for policymakers, spoke to AFP about why AI makes these attacks harder to stop.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: How is AI changing these types of attacks?

A: The reality is that a lot of these "IoT" (Internet of Things or connected home) devices have very poor cybersecurity hygiene, and so they are very easy targets for bad actors to compromise.

Historically, a worm would exploit a fixed set of vulnerabilities, and that meant you could fix these vulnerabilities and prevent the worm from propagating any further to devices that had been updated.

Now, with AI, an attacker can design a worm that tailors the attack strategy to that device's specifics and these vulnerabilities can be different.

This makes it significantly harder to interrupt the propagation of an AI-driven computer worm, because you have to anticipate all the possible vulnerabilities the devices might present.

Some of these vulnerabilities are not software bugs.

They can also be misconfigurations -- for instance, if someone has used the same password for multiple services, or hasn't configured a database properly.

What AI-driven malware does is accelerate the pace at which these vulnerabilities are exploited and the scale.

In the past, your corner coffee shop, or the laptop in your basement that you use very rarely, might not be up to date, but it wouldn't be targeted by a human attacker, because they don't have the resources and the time to do that.

Now, the autonomy gained by using AI means that all these devices that are less immediate targets become interesting targets as a launchpad to attack more interesting targets.

But we have to keep in mind that a human is launching an agent.

Once launched, the agent can replicate, as we showed in our work, but it is launched by a human.

Q: What can we do to mitigate the risks?

A: We won't bring the risk to zero and we have to realize that, despite the fact that some of these vulnerability fixes are available, people don't update their devices or don't apply the fixes in a timely manner.

Despite cybersecurity experts calling for increased cybersecurity for decades, we still live in a world where a lot more can be invested in improving the security of our computer systems.

There are really three things we recommend in the very short term.

The first is to change development and testing practices to ensure that AI models are initially disconnected from the internet, as a precaution, to understand their behavior better before we expose critical infrastructure on the internet [to them].

The second recommendation is to create an international body to standardize both how we train and how we contain AI models. Both are important. We want to train models that are safer.

The last part is about making reporting of security incidents mandatory. Right now, we are only getting information as a function of what AI developers are willing to release, and that's a big problem.

In particular, the academic community needs a lot more information about incidents to be able to develop countermeasures much more quickly.

Otherwise, we have to do a lot of research on understanding the threat first, before we can develop the countermeasures. Otherwise, we won't see what bad actors are doing until an attack is launched.


Man United’s Martinez Blasts Board’s Lack of Investment

Manchester United's Argentine defender Lisandro Martinez (L) challenges for the ball against Atletico Madrid's Spanish defender Alejandro Grimaldo during the UEFA Champions League soccer match between Atletico Madrid and Manchester United, in Madrid, Spain, 13 October 2026. (EPA)
Manchester United's Argentine defender Lisandro Martinez (L) challenges for the ball against Atletico Madrid's Spanish defender Alejandro Grimaldo during the UEFA Champions League soccer match between Atletico Madrid and Manchester United, in Madrid, Spain, 13 October 2026. (EPA)
TT

Man United’s Martinez Blasts Board’s Lack of Investment

Manchester United's Argentine defender Lisandro Martinez (L) challenges for the ball against Atletico Madrid's Spanish defender Alejandro Grimaldo during the UEFA Champions League soccer match between Atletico Madrid and Manchester United, in Madrid, Spain, 13 October 2026. (EPA)
Manchester United's Argentine defender Lisandro Martinez (L) challenges for the ball against Atletico Madrid's Spanish defender Alejandro Grimaldo during the UEFA Champions League soccer match between Atletico Madrid and Manchester United, in Madrid, Spain, 13 October 2026. (EPA)

Manchester United defender Lisandro Martinez blasted the club's board for a perceived lack of investment this summer, after the team were beaten by Atletico Madrid in the Champions League on Tuesday.

United are winless in five games across all competitions after the 2-0 defeat in the Spanish capital and have made their worst start to a Premier League season in 40 years.

"Really poor," Martinez told Amazon Prime when asked about the team's performance against Atletico.

"I have to control myself a lot but sometimes is a reflection... (or) mirror of how our club is at the moment."

Martinez said he "100 percent" expected more investment in the squad during the summer after United finished third in the Premier League last season to return to Europe's top competition.

"I expect more from our technical director (Jason Wilcox), I have to be honest, as players we have to do more but it is also important when you make a strong squad to be ready for these kind of nights," he continued.

Martinez said last season the club had "created the base to create an amazing team", which was not followed through on.

Pressure is mounting on coach Michael Carrick after five games without a win, but Martinez suggested sacking the Englishman was not the way forward.

"You can't keep changing, changing, changing the manager. What about other areas? I can't say more," said Martinez.

"Tonight it is easy to say the coach (is to blame), easy to say the players, but also we have to see other areas."

Red Devils minority owner Jim Ratcliffe was in the stadium to watch the league phase defeat by last season's semi-finalists.

Man United spent around 140 million pounds ($185m) this summer on midfielders Carlos Baleba, Youri Tielemans and Andrey Santos, but fans were upset the club did not reinforce in other positions, including left-back and striker.

Speaking to reporters after the game, Carrick said he had not heard Martinez's comments and so could not judge them.

"I think it's a little bit on the emotions of the game as well, of coming here and being disappointed not to get something from the game," said the coach.

Former Manchester United and England striker Wayne Rooney said Martinez's criticism was excessive.

"I think he's maybe gone a bit too far, and that should have stayed internal," Rooney told Amazon Prime.

"You can clearly see that he cares and he wants the club to invest more money in more players, and to do that he's probably one of the players who'll be out the door if I'm being honest."