"Thumbspeak"

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/10/20/081020crbo_books_menand

I realize that I usually write what sounds like my own decrying of the evils of technology, and I don't mean to be doing that, but sometimes an idea that's absolutely perfect is really not that great upon closer inspection (see the King of the Hill episode where they go to a lawnmower focus group for an example). In this case, however, it isn't the technology I'm debating about, but the author's views on it.

I read an article in The New Yorker about text messages. It's the review of a book called Txtng: The Gr8 Db8. The author makes some interesting points. For one, the rise of texting is taking over where email left off, having left phone calls and face-to-face interaction, and good old snail-mail letters, in the dust. He claims that information is spread fastest this way, and the speed at which information travels has been increased incrementally throughout the above list. While I agree that texting is quick, I disagree that it's the quickest way to find something out; in my opinion, nothing beats a phone call or face-to-face chat. In my personal experience, emails often lack vital details, and the loss of tone of voice prolongs any miscommunications because there's no way to tell if you're talkin about a wholly different thing than the person you're talking to. People also tend to leave out vital details in emails, because they assume you already know something. Text messages can be even worse. Because of this, it sometimes takes a day or so worth of emails, or an hour of texts, to accomplish what could be done with a 5-minute phone call (and that includes the niceties). I notice that the author completely skips over instant messaging, which I would use as my preferred medium of communication with friends if I were near a computer.

From a linuistic approach, I enjoyed this article because it shows that languages - specifically the shorthand therein - is becoming more blended as the popularity of texting grows. The author speaks about " 'code-mixing,' in which two languages—one of them invariably English—are conflated in a single expression. Germans write “mbsseg” to mean “mail back so schnell es geht” (“as fast as you can”). So texting has probably done some damage to the planet’s cultural ecology, to lingo-diversity. People are better able to communicate across national borders, but at some cost to variation."

Personally, I find the loss of variation a small price to pay for the communication skills that it garners. Wouldn't you rather be able to talk to people - especially those people with whom you were close enough friends to be sending messages - without having to worry too much about language barriers? This does raise a point, though: those people who you text with are good enough friends as a general rule that you don't need to worry about language barriers, since you already speak with them. It's a moot point.

I appreciate the author's interest in such a topical subject, but he does make some mistakes in just the two-page article (I'll have to read the book to see if it was the author of the book or the author of the article). For one, "wassup" did not originate in a Budweiser commercial. True, the commercial did make the lingo more widespread, but the backstory for that ad campaign is from a tradition that some friends (the ones who appear in the commercial) used to greet eachother with the phrase, and they videotaped themselves being silly and spread it around (a viral video on VHS). Unless Budweiser lied about its campaign - and, why would it? - the word was around before the commercial was. I have also never seen anyone use the Homer Simpson Emoticon in email, text, or IM form, spiffy as it may be. Perhaps 25 is just too old for me to reap all the benefits of texting.