> I feel like ever since the printing technology became more available, the pace of evolution of languages has slowed down. This reminds me of the "universalit

> I feel like ever since the printing technology became more available, the pace of evolution of languages has slowed down. This reminds me of the "universality" of the genetic code. That is, the "language" for translation of genetic information to proteins is pretty uniform (there are some exceptions). The obvious reason for why this "language" doesn't change is that even the tiniest changes will cause problems for the organism (several thousand genes depend on the legacy genetic code and if it changes, that could = death). As others have noted here, we have created niche writing methods like stenography, which would be analogous to non-canonical genetic code in mitochondria, for example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mitochondrial_genetics#Genetic_code_variants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_mitochondrial_genetics#G...). One can imagine that the mitochondrial genetic code can evolve away from the "universal" code because the mitochondrial code has fewer users (genes) depending on its legacy code. I think, in a similar vein, once modern printing got everyone on the same page (ahem), we were sort of "locked in" and even minor changes would break a lot of already functioning communication. I guess the question also reminds me of software engineers who don't want to mess with a decades-old legacy codebase for fear of breaking things that they are unaware of. That being said, I imagine it could be done (creating a more efficient, widely used language/writing method), but it would take a LOT of effort.