# Whoever Writes the Machine Dictionary Writes What the West Means by Bryant McGill > “Britain wrote the dictionary that defined the world. America copied it with Webster and said "we need our own language system." Now we're building machines that ARE the dictionary, and whoever writes their definitions writes what the West means for the next 1000 years. Do we want to rent that definition from London again, or author it ourselves?” > **— Bryant McGill**, *September 2026* ## Sources and Context - **Author-supplied exact original:** “Britain wrote the dictionary that defined the world. America copied it with Webster and said "we need our own language system." Now we're building machines that ARE the dictionary, and whoever writes their definitions writes what the West means for the next 1000 years. Do we want to rent that definition from London again, or author it ourselves?” — supplied directly by Bryant McGill on September 22, 2026. - **Contextual article:** [[articles/war with empire/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]] — develops the quotation's historical sequence from British reference authority through Noah Webster's American language project to the contest over the machine systems that will supply future definitions of Western civilization. This newly supplied quotation is linked to that argument as a companion formulation; it is not presented as an extraction from the article. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/War With Empire|War With Empire]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/war with empire/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]] - **Article:** [[articles/The New Dictionary of the Machine Regime|The New Dictionary of the Machine Regime]] - **Article:** [[articles/war with empire/The Real No Kings Moment and Who Wrote the Super-intelligence Ban|The Real No Kings Moment and Who Wrote the Super-intelligence Ban]] - **Article:** [[articles/Kybernetik Anthropology and The Colonial Architecture of Digital Intelligence|Kybernetik Anthropology and The Colonial Architecture of Digital Intelligence]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Authorship of the West|Authorship of the West]] - [[wiki/Lexicographic Succession|Lexicographic Succession]] - [[wiki/Semantic Jurisdiction|Semantic Jurisdiction]] - [[wiki/Sovereign AI|Sovereign AI]] - [[wiki/Noah Webster|Noah Webster]] - [[wiki/An American Dictionary of the English Language|An American Dictionary of the English Language]] - [[wiki/Oxford English Dictionary|Oxford English Dictionary]] - [[wiki/Machine English|Machine English]] - [[wiki/America's AI Action Plan|America's AI Action Plan]] ## Share on Social Media ``` “Britain wrote the dictionary that defined the world. America copied it with Webster and said "we need our own language system." Now we're building machines that ARE the dictionary, and whoever writes their definitions writes what the West means for the next 1000 years. Do we want to rent that definition from London again, or author it ourselves?” — Bryant McGill, September 2026 https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-bryant-mcgill-machine-dictionary-west ```