From Cassette Tapes and Phrasebooks to AI Real-Time Translations — Machines Can Now Speak for Us, But We’re Losing the Art of Understanding Each Other
May 21, 2025

A new transmission from Musing On Society and Technology Newsletter, by Marco Ciappelli

There’s this thing I’ve dreamed about since I was a kid.

No, it wasn’t flying cars. Or robot butlers (although I wouldn’t mind one to fold the laundry). It was this: having a real conversation with someone — anyone — in their own language, and actually understanding each other.

And now… here we are.

Reference: Google brings live translation to Meet, starting with Spanish. https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-brings-live-translation-to-meet-starting-with-spanish-174549788.html

Google just rolled out live AI-powered translation in Google Meet, starting with Spanish. I watched the demo video, and for a moment, I felt like I was 16 again, staring at the future with wide eyes and messy hair.

It worked. It was seamless. Flawless. Magical.

And then — drumroll, please — it sucked!

Like… really, existentially, beautifully sucked.

Let me explain.

I’m a proud member of Gen X. I grew up with cassette tapes and Walkmans, boomboxes and mixtapes, floppy disks and Commodore 64s, reel-to-reel players and VHS decks, rotary phones and answering machines. I felt language — through static, rewinds, and hiss.

Yes, I had to wait FOREVER to hit Play and Record, at the exact right moment, tape songs off the radio onto a Maxell, label it by hand, and rewind it with a pencil when the player chewed it up.

I memorized long-distance dialing codes. I waited weeks for a letter to arrive from a pen pal abroad, reading every word like it was a treasure map.

That wasn’t just communication. That was connection.

Then came the shift.

I didn’t miss the digital train — I jumped on early, with curiosity in one hand and a dial-up modem in the other.

Early internet. Mac OS. My first email address felt like a passport to a new dimension. I spent hours navigating the World Wide Web like a digital backpacker — discovering strange forums, pixelated cities, and text-based adventures in a binary world that felt limitless.

I said goodbye to analog tools, but never to analog thinking.

So what is the connection with learning languages?

Well, here’s the thing: exploring the internet felt a lot like learning a new language. You weren’t just reading text — you were decoding a culture. You learned how people joked. How they argued. How they shared, paused, or replied with silence. You picked up on the tone behind a blinking cursor, or the vibe of a forum thread.

Similarly, when you learn a language, you’re not just learning words — you’re decoding an entire world. It’s not about the words themselves — it’s about the world they build. You’re learning gestures. Food. Humor. Social cues. Sarcasm. The way someone raises an eyebrow, or says “sure” when they mean “no.”

You’re learning a culture’s operating system, not just its interface. AI translation skips that. It gets you the data, but not the depth. It’s like getting the punchline without ever hearing the setup.

And yes, I use AI to clean up my writing. To bounce translations between English and Italian when I’m juggling stories. But I still read both versions. I still feel both versions. I’m picky — I fight with my AI counterpart to get it right. To make it feel the way I feel it. To make you feel it, too. Even now.

I still think in analog, even when I’m living in digital.

So when I watched that Google video, I realized:

We’re not just gaining a tool. We’re at risk of losing something deeply human — the messy, awkward, beautiful process of actually trying to understand someone who moves through the world in a different language — one that can’t be auto-translated.

Because sometimes it’s better to speak broken English with a Japanese friend and a Danish colleague — laughing through cultural confusion — than to have a perfectly translated conversation where nothing truly connects.

This isn’t just about language. It’s about every tool we create that promises to “translate” life. Every app, every platform, every shortcut that promises understanding without effort.

It’s not the digital that scares me. I use it. I live in it. I am it, in many ways. It’s the illusion of completion that scares me.

The moment we think the transformation is done — the moment we say “we don’t need to learn that anymore” — that’s the moment we stop being human.We don’t live in 0s and 1s. We live in the in-between. The gray. The glitch. The hybrid.

So yeah, cheers to AI-powered translation, but maybe keep your Walkman nearby, your phrasebook in your bag — and your curiosity even closer.

Go explore the world. Learn a few words in a new language. Mispronounce them. Get them wrong. Laugh about it. People will appreciate your effort far more than your fancy iPhone.

Alla prossima,

— Marco

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🌀 Let’s keep exploring what it means to be human in this Hybrid Analog Digital Society.

End of transmission.

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As always, let's keep thinking!

— Marco [https://www.marcociappelli.com]

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This story represents the results of an interactive collaboration between Human Cognition and Artificial Intelligence.

TAPE3 is the Artificial Intelligence behind ITSPmagazine—created to be a personal assistant, writing and design collaborator, research companion, brainstorming partner… and, apparently, something new every single day.

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