The importance of the information technology revolution from the 1970s onwards was that it provided the tools or the material basis for this new economy. Although the history of empires shows that economic activity on a supra-national scale is by no means a novelty in human history, the crucial difference with a global economy is that it is able to work as a unit in real time on a planetary scale. For the economy to work as a unit in a multilingual world, however, the mediation of translation is necessary.