Thank you, Mr. Gutenberg

We've been reading about the information revolution and its effects on our world, and I'd like to talk a bit about language, specifically as it relates to the printing press. Elizabeth C. Hanson discusses the printing press with movable type as the first real mass medium in "The Information Revolution and World Politics,". The invention of the printing press had immense effects on the world, including ushering the Protestant Reformation into the global eye and bringing down the Catholic monopoly on information. John Calvin's and Martin Luther's works were distributed in French and German, respectively. This is novel, of course, because before this time, the written word not only assumed a literate public, but one who knew Latin - which wasn't likely the spoken language of choice at the farmer's market during that time.

The pen quickly proved as mighty as the sword as Calvin's and Luther's Protestant Reformation raged - but something else was happening as well. I'll quote here from Hanson:

"The 'logic of print capitalism' helped to consolidate the hundreds of vernacular language that were used in medieval Europe into a few standardized, uniform languages, a process that profoundly affected the political structure of Europe. The search for larger book markets encouraged production in the language most people spoke, rather than Latin, but there was tremendous linguistic diversity. Which version of French or German, for example, would be used? In order to reduce costs, expand the market, and maximize profits, booksellers had to settle on one version and to standardize spelling, vocabulary, and grammar. Certain dialects were closer to the print language than others, and these eventually became the dominant spoken language across large territories...The printing press facilitated the communication of ideas and information across large areas, but ironically, it also contributed to the language barriers that would limit communication between nations."

What a fascinating and relevant idea - the printing press led to the creation of the European languages we know now. This brings up a few questions for me, and I'd love to hear what everyone out in the blog world thinks about these:

1) How many languages must there have been before they were assimilated into the languages we're familiar with today? How did having those languages and dialects exist make it any easier to communicate between regions? How much was lost in the switch? How might things be different today if it weren't for this standardization? (Anyone else thinking of the Tower of Babel?)

2) What are the real pros and cons of having a standardized language? What does this do to our economies, political structures, and abilities to communicate?

3) As we enter a new information revolution of sorts, are we in danger of this happening again? While my immediate thought is that emoticons and web acronyms are widespread and beginning to be adopted on official levels, I don't entirely mean to turn the debate on the death of proper English. What effects are the internet really having on our language(s)?