Stephenson's novel deals with the language as software theme in rather fun ways, such as what might happen if you change the basic operating system.

I'm not poly-lingual myself (Still trying to master the one I do know), but I know many who say that when they have the opportunity to speak a different language - and only that language - that they begin to think differently. There are expressions in many langages that have no translation, perhaps, because you have to be able to think the idea in the language in order to grok it.

On the other hand, Edward O. Wilson (in Consilience) discussed the way that humans percieve colors (hardwire) and the way that we name colors (software). If I recall correctly, he showed that many languages had words for specific areas of the spectra as primary colors. In other words, while humans have many words for yellow, all those words tend to represent the same range of frequencies from culture to culture. How much does the hardware influence the software? If we could see like a hawk would we think differently?

And while not directly part of our nervous system, how does our science based ability to see the regions of the spectra our eyes cannot, or look deep into the microscopic world, or indeed have the eyes of a hawk change the way we think? Will images of distant galaxies change our software, resulting in yet another step in the evolution of consiousness?

And what happens when our nervous systems begin to interact directly with computers? When the eyepiece on the telescope is replaced with a fiber optic cable plugged into our optical fibers? The software better change, or it may just crash.