As UNICODE's 23rd conference convenes in Prague, it does so against the backdrop of a highly textured geopolitical and cultural history. In this wide-ranging, informative, and entertaining keynote presentation, DePalma draws together the politik of Central Europe from the last two hundred years, the medieval scholastic traditions that gave birth to structural linguistics and semiotics, and the communications theory that grew out of these disciplines. He ties these phenomena to UNICODE and the multilingual communications issues that continue to drive its evolution and adoption.