On the other hand, in a society whose communication component is

Host: The sun was sinking behind the high-rises, bleeding its last light into the glass walls of the city. The air was thick with voices — advertisements screaming from screens, music leaking from earphones, notifications chiming like digital raindrops.
In a public square of hurrying faces, Jack and Jeeny sat on the steps of a closed library. Around them, holographic signs floated and flickered. A giant screen projected a politician’s speech, words translating in a dozen languages at once. Yet no one listened.

The night smelled of rain and electricity. The city spoke, but few heard.

Jeeny: “Lyotard said that in a society whose communication component is becoming more prominent day by day, language assumes a new importance.” (She looked at the screen.) “He said that decades ago. Imagine what he’d say now.”

Jack: (his voice dry) “He’d probably turn off his phone.”

Host: Jeeny laughed, but her eyes were serious. The blue glow of the screen washed over their faces, flickering like ghost light.

Jeeny: “You’re mocking it, but he was right. Language has become the currency of this age. Tweets, memes, headlines — every word is a weapon or a prayer now.”

Jack: “Or just noise, Jeeny. Endless noise. Everyone’s talking, no one’s communicating. Lyotard warned that language was gaining importance, but he didn’t predict it would lose its meaning.”

Jeeny: “Maybe meaning didn’t disappear. Maybe it just moved — into the spaces between the words. Into the feeling of what’s left unsaid.”

Host: A group of teenagers passed, their faces lit by their screens, fingers fluttering across keyboards like birds in flight. Their laughter echoed, but not toward each other — only into the devices that glowed in their hands.

Jack: “You see that? They’re talking, sure — but not to the people beside them. It’s like the language has been set free from voices, and now it just floats, untethered. Lyotard would have called it a new form of alienation.”

Jeeny: “Or a new form of connection. Those screens — they’re bridges, Jack, not walls. Maybe they’re talking to someone miles away, someone who understands them better than the person sitting next to them.”

Jack: “You mean communication without context. Emojis instead of empathy, hashtags instead of heartbeats. That’s not connection, Jeeny. That’s simulation.”

Jeeny: (sharply) “And what do you call the letters soldiers wrote during war — love written to paper, not faces? Language has always bridged distance. You just don’t like the tools.”

Host: The wind shifted, carrying the smell of street food and diesel, voices of a thousand strangers, all woven into the same air. The screen above them changed, now showing a celebrity apology, the subtitles rolling like confessions in every tongue.

Jack: “It’s not the tools, Jeeny. It’s the inflation of language. Every word has been spent so many times, it’s worthless now. Sorry, love, truth, freedom — they’ve all been commodified, replicated, marketed. Even apologies are sponsored.”

Jeeny: “But language has always evolved, Jack. When printing was invented, people said books would kill the soul of speech. When radio came, they said words would lose their weight. But look — we’re still talking, still arguing, still trying to understand one another.”

Jack: “Are we? Or are we just performing understanding? We speak to signal, not to connect. Every sentence is a mirror, not a bridge.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the mirror is what we need — to see ourselves, to recognize our echoes. Maybe the new importance Lyotard spoke of is not in language itself, but in how we listen.”

Host: A pause — the kind that holds more than silence. The city’s rhythm slowed, as if waiting. The screen above them glitched, the image freezing, and for a moment, even the noise of the world seemed to hold its breath.

Jack: (softly) “Do you really think we still listen, Jeeny? That we even can? We’ve been trained to scroll, not to hear.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But the human ear is stubborn, Jack. It still searches for truth, even under the static. Language will change, yes — it always has — but its heart stays the same: the desire to reach another soul.”

Jack: “You’re romanticizing it. Language isn’t a bridge anymore — it’s a battlefield. Every word weaponized, every silence interpreted. Lyotard saw this coming — the struggle of narratives, the collapse of grand stories. He said the world would fracture into microscopic truths, each one screaming to be heard.”

Jeeny: “Then maybe the fracture is what keeps it alive. A symphony isn’t one note, Jack. It’s a thousand, each one clashing, each one necessary. Maybe truth isn’t unity — it’s polyphony.”

Host: A train rumbled beneath the square, shaking the ground. Lights flashed. Rain began to fall, softly, slowly, then harder — washing the dust from the steps, smearing the digital reflections into living color.

Jack: “Polyphony sounds poetic, Jeeny. But you can’t build a society on noise. Without shared meaning, we’re just voices in a storm.”

Jeeny: “Then let’s learn to sing in the storm, Jack. Language doesn’t die in chaos — it adapts. Every revolution begins when someone changes how they speak. The civil rights movement, feminism, even the internet itself — all born from new forms of speech.”

Jack: “And every dictatorship begins with controlled language. Censorship, propaganda, manipulated words — it’s the same weapon, just wielded differently.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. Which is why it’s so important. That’s what Lyotard meant. In a world where communication defines power, language is the new revolution.”

Host: The rain slowed. Drops slid down the screen, distorting the face of the speaker above them, turning his words into blurred light. Jack watched, then sighed, his shoulders easing.

Jack: “You know, maybe you’re right. Maybe the problem isn’t the language — it’s the listener. We’ve outsourced our hearing to algorithms, our thinking to feeds. But the meaning — that’s still ours to make.”

Jeeny: “Exactly. The new importance isn’t about grammar or translation — it’s about responsibility. Every word we speak, share, or ignore — it shapes the world now.”

Jack: “A terrifying kind of power.”

Jeeny: “And a beautiful one.”

Host: The rain ceased. A patch of sky opened, and through it, a faint moon emerged, haloed by mist. The screen above them flickered off, and for the first time that night, there was only silence — not empty, but alive.

Jack: “Maybe Lyotard was right — language has changed. It’s not just speaking anymore. It’s being.”

Jeeny: “And in a world that’s always talking, maybe listening is the new revolution.”

Host: The two sat in the fading light, the city’s noise now a distant hum. Around them, the words of a million voices rose, collided, mingled — and in that tangled harmony, something human still beat — the pulse of language, the breath of understanding, the fragile, eternal, untranslatable hope to be heard.