Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use these languages, or we remain mute.

Ballard is pointing to a cultural shift in which scientific and technological systems do not merely provide tools but shape the very categories through which people describe reality. “Languages” here means more than vocabulary: it includes metaphors, models, and ways of reasoning (data, code, networks, feedback, risk). As these frameworks become dominant, opting out is not neutral; it risks social and intellectual silence—an inability to participate in public life, work, or even self-understanding. The quote also carries an ambivalence typical of Ballard: technology expands expressive power while narrowing imagination to what its systems can represent, pressuring individuals to translate experience into technical terms or be unheard.