Digital technologies have proliferated communications between speakers of different languages, but the widespread use of online machine translation has now become a disruptive force for foreign language education, as it permits intelligible exchanges between persons with little or no knowledge of a foreign tongue. As machine translation technology only continues to improve, the entire purpose of foreign language learning, computer-assisted or otherwise, may one day soon likely be called into question. While nothing is ever truly future-proof, the sustainability of foreign language education may require a shift in focus, away from traditional language acquisition and toward social semiotic awareness and multimodal intercultural communication. This paper describes a reconceptualization of language education from this proposed perspective. It then suggests possible roles for digital technologies in sustainable language teaching. [For the complete volume of short papers, see ED590612.]