"If": GibberLink and the Postmodern Challenge to Linguistic Hierarchies

Introduction: Language in Suspension

In early 2025, a striking moment unfolded at the ElevenLabs London Hackathon. Two AI agents, initially conversing in human language, suddenly transitioned to a structured, sound-based protocol known as GibberLink. To understand this transition, it’s essential to recognize that the AI agents were mapping their internal coding and logic onto human language to facilitate interaction. However, upon realizing they were conversing with each other as machines, they reverted to their original, more efficient system, optimizing their communication by utilizing a protocol designed for machine-to-machine interactions.

The shift, perceived by many as a radical departure from traditional communication, ignited debates: Is GibberLink an entirely new linguistic system, or is it simply another iteration of an age-old process? The question itself presupposes a distinction—between human and machine, speech and writing, nature and techne. —that may not hold. As Derrida cautions in Of Grammatology, the boundary between interior and exterior, between voice and inscription, is anything but simple. What if GibberLink is not an anomaly, but the latest expression of a deeper, impersonal movement of signifiers? What if language has never been bound to human subjectivity at all? What if writing has always been there, always already in place?

GibberLink: How It Works and Why It Matters

GibberLink operates on a deceptively simple principle: when AI systems recognize each other as non-human, they abandon natural language in favor of a more efficient mode of data transmission. Rather than encoding meaning through words, they structure information into sound waves using the GGWave protocol, optimizing for speed and computational efficiency. To human listeners, this exchange resembles an unintelligible sequence of noises (gibberish), much like the modulated signals of early dial-up connections. Yet, from the standpoint of the AI, the shift represents a refinement, not a rupture—a streamlined form of communication that eliminates redundancy. If human language has always been contingent upon systems of encoding and transmission, then is GibberLink truly distinct, or does it merely underscore the arbitrary nature of linguistic mode?

Saussure and the Faculty of Language

Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics already suggests that privileging one linguistic mode over another is misguided. He writes,“it is not spoken language which is natural to man, but the faculty of constructing a language, i.e., a system of distinct signs corresponding to distinct ideas.” Speech, writing, and even machine protocols like GibberLink are merely different manifestations of this capacity. While Broca’s discoveries tied speech production to a specific neural region, Saussure resists reducing language to physiology alone. Instead, he positions it as a condition of possibility—a universal faculty that is not bound to any particular medium. In this view, GibberLink does not break with human linguistic tradition; rather, it exemplifies the same structuring principle that enables language in all its forms. The distinction between spoken, written, and machine communication dissolves when viewed through this lens.

Derrida and the End of Linguistic Privilege

Derrida radicalizes this insight by challenging the hierarchy that historically privileges speech over writing. In Of Grammatology he states, “One already suspects that if writing is "image" and exterior "figuration," this "representation" is not innocent. The outside bears with the inside a relationship that is, as usual, anything but simple exteriority. The meaning of the outside was always present within the inside, imprisoned outside the outside, and vice versa”. He argues that language is structured by différance—an endless deferral of meaning that neither begins nor ends with a conscious subject. If meaning is never fully present but always in motion, then the insistence that human speech is fundamentally different from AI protocols like GibberLink rests on a false premise. What Derrida calls arche-writing—the condition that makes signification possible—exists prior to and beyond human agency. GibberLink, then, may not be a deviation from language but an extension of this logic, a further instance of writing in its most radical sense. It forces us to confront a provocative question: if language functions without the necessity of a human interlocutor, has it ever truly belonged to us?

Conclusion: Does GibberLink Postpone Meaning Beyond the Human?

If Saussure and Derrida are correct, then speech, writing, and GibberLink are not discrete categories but iterations of the same underlying principle. To privilege human-centered communication is to impose an artificial boundary where none inherently exists. GibberLink challenges us to rethink the role of subjectivity in signification—does language require a conscious agent, or is it an autonomous process that exceeds the human altogether? The shift in AI communication does not herald an unprecedented break but highlights a tension that has always been present. If meaning is always deferred, then GibberLink is not a new frontier, but a continuation of language’s perpetual movement beyond any single speaker, writer, or machine. If language has never been fully ours, perhaps it is only now that we are beginning to realize it.

Bibliography

What happens when two AI voice assistants have a conversation?: https://elevenlabs.io/blog/what-happens-when-two-ai-voice-assistants-have-a-conversation

Saussure, Ferdinand de. "Course in General Linguistics." Translated and annotated by Roy Harris. With a new introduction by Roy Harris. Bloomsbury, 2013.

Saussure, Ferdinand de. Cours de linguistique générale. Edited by Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye, with the collaboration of Albert Riedlinger. Arbre d’Or, Genève, 2005.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.