The workplaces of the future will be more human, not less

In the 18th century, those operating at the highest levels of society, from London to Moscow, needed to be able to speak French, then the language of status, the nobility, politics, intellectual life and modernisation. A hundred years later, British advances in industry, science and engineering meant that English succeeded French: a tongue with West Germanic origins replaced a romance language as the means of conducting business and diplomacy on the international stage. Today, even in some parts of China, English is still used as the global lingua franca, a leveller that enables deals to get done and the wheels of commerce and technology to spin. Around a decade ago, another type of language – one that was written rather than spoken – was held up as a deterministic factor for those seeking to gain influence or advantage in the digital age: coding. Its champions proselytised that proficiency in programming would determine employability and access to a thrusting, energetic entrepreneurial future.