Forever Choo-Choo Train

It’s not the same as forgetting that a man’s head on a computer screen rolling around the room isn’t a human being, but the slow motion collapse of our language via texting into initials and acronyms can’t be a good sign. It certainly makes me wonder in what direction we’re heading. Over 1.5 trillion text messages were sent in 2009. Five billion are sent per day. They are sent using a lingo of abbreviations, initial letters of words,  numbers, buzzwords and smiley faces. Forget the loss of nuance. Forget the loss of vocabulary. For me, the money question is: wcytiaawwoailownbasf? (Whuffo can you think in an advanced way with only abbreviations, initial letters of words, numbers, buzzwords and smiley faces?) It is not progress to text the dog walker to come alap (as late as possible), or your date of the night before that you craft (can’t remember a f—ing thing) except that you csl (couldn’t stop laughing).  It almost makes the American Tobacco Company seem like sweet geniuses of grammar for punctuating the L.S.M.F.T on its killer cigarette ad for Lucky Strikes back in 1917. I keep trying to think iomo (it’s only my opinion). But I know it’s not. We’re in a headlong rush back to the simple and the kid-ish.  And the irony is that it’s technology itself, a triumph of brain power, that’s turning us into cartoons of adults – not just permanent shoppers but permanent kids playing with our toys. Benjamin Barber thinks our preference “for easy over hard, and simple over complex results in a preference for fast over slow. The world of kids is a hare’s civilization in which tortoises have no place”, the pleasure of slowness disappears and speed rules with no purpose except itself. Soon I could be telling my friends I’m afraid to fly so I’m taking the 8:15 choo-choo train to Washington.