The coronavirus pandemic did not initially appear connected to the long project of shrinking swords into words. It was a biological crisis.
Hospitals filled, governments issued emergency measures, borders closed and economies stalled. But beneath these visible disruptions a deeper transformation was taking place.
The pandemic forced nearly all human interaction into mediated communication. People spoke through screens, work occurred through messages and video calls and politics happened through digital platforms. Language replaced physical presence as the primary mechanism of coordination.
The consequences of this were subtle but profound.
Human society had been partially digitized before the pandemic. Now it became almost completely dependent on language-based systems. Thus meaning became infrastructure and words became the medium through which entire populations navigated daily life.
Clause One had found its final accelerator.