Saturday, March 5, 2011

text messaging

"in the name of 'progress' our official culture is striving to force the new media to do the work of the old" - marshall mcluhan
i like this quote because i think it is true to a point. we use some of the new technology of today to help with our communication thinking that it is the best way to communicate when sometimes it can do more damage than good.

i find it funny that language and communication is basically done either by phone or by typing words onto a little screen and sending it in only a few seconds to another person. its a giant leap for technology but what about the basic idea of communication and being able to listen to a person and know how they are feeling. texting only gets the word across it doesn't do well with emotions or knowing how a person truly feels. i know i've been a bad with texting thinking that the other person could just read my mind and know how i'm feeling. but thats not the case and it never has been. emotions may be difficult for guys to understand with girls but when texting is thrown into the equation it just blows it all out of proportion.

this quick and new language that has started with texting is making the entire younger generation look stupid. i think its one of the weirdest things to actually hear someone say "lol" or "omg" in public to their friends. it takes away the beauty of language and makes everything abbreviated and fast. language today isn't about intellect and being able to show knowledge, its about getting the point across faster and letting the other people know what you want to say with only a few short letters.

texting is a wonderful example of how this medium of global communication is slowly turning our society more and more to become used to everything being fast paced and instant.

1 comment:

  1. I loved the quote that you selected for your medium. It's true that we often expect our new methods of communication to cover all the bases, while in reality they aren't always sufficient to maintain a relationship or fulfill every kind of communication need. I know that it's often frustrating to try to distill what I want to say down into the 160 characters that my text allows me. Those kinds of limitations definitely shape how we express ourselves. I don't think that it's necessarily all bad though. While texting doesn't make a good substitute for meaningful conversations in person, it can be a fun way to keep in touch and an easy way to check in with someone. Maybe we just have to be aware of its limitations in order to work around them.

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