Internet English

I was thinking recently about the Internet and computers and how new technologies often seem to necessitate changes to our language --abbreviations, new slang terms, etc. How long will it be fore computer keyboards begin changing to better reflect this changing language? Soon there'll be keys for "www", ".com", ".org", and all the rest; not to mention keys for "LOL", "BRB", and other words and phrases commonly used. And why stop there? I believe we are at the beginning of a long process of replacing words made up of the building blocks of letters with conversations made up of pre-made ideas and statements.

As this idea first crossed my mind, I immediately thought, "Oh no! We're dumbing ourselves down, teaching people not to read and write, simplifying the process of thought into a uniform mass of buzzwords!" I envisioned a future nation of people tying on giant keyboards where each key has a picture on it, one for each pre-made thought. A future where we use picture for words --hmmmm, now this is starting to make me think of someting other than "1984".

Consider the Chinese: an ancient people with an ancient language, a complex system of pictograms, a different picture or symbol for each word or idea. It has hundreds of thousands of them, a rich and diverse ecology of communication. This is a far cry from our 101-key keyboards, but what could such a language have developed from? Possibly something similar to what we have now?

Let's talk for a minute about codes. The passwords thatwe use in English are basically strings of letters and numbers that we hope we can remember but that thieves can't. Alphanumeric gibbberish, which only work in an alphanumeric language. When all you have to use are whole words, though, your password needs to be more than just one word, even a long one. It has to be a more complex thought. And thus we get the "passwords" often used in the Orient since antiquity: riddles, puzzles, and mysteries. And thus we have the mysterious culture that is the Far East.

Could that possibly be the direction that our society is going? Instead of constricting the range of thought, maybe the shift in our language from textual to visual is bringing us into a deeper and richer culture than we could ever have imagined. This excites me.

From a historical standpoint, I must point out that the English language is about due for a massive change. For the past two thousand years, the language has changed drastically approximately every five centuries. The last such change occurred just over five hundred years ago, with the invention of the printing press. I suggest that we are in the midst of another change, brought about by the invention of the Internet; we're just not noticing it (these changes take decades or generations to complete themselves).

In fact, I think this change began decades ago, with the invention of recorded sound and imagery. For the first time, young people can hear and see the way people talked in their parents', or even their grandparents', times. This causes turmoil in everyday speech. On the one hand, some pople like the "archaisms" from twenty years ago, and want to preserve them; on the other hand, some people despise them and prefer to invent new words. This accelerates the rate of change while preserving each change to be reexamined later. Throw Internet abbreviations into the mix, and you have the makings for an almost entirely new language another two or three generations down the road.

Another consideration I must bring up: most of the language shifts in the past two millennia have bee nbrough about through invasions of the English speaking people; it's only the last one and the current one that coincided with new technology. Rome conquered the Celtic and Gaelic tribes that occupied england at the time and introduced Latin. Five hundred years later the Romans withdrew and Anglo-Saxon tribes from Germany moved in, bringing their German tongues into the mix which is known as Old English. Another five hundred years later came the Norman invasion, forcing the French language into the Anglo language and forming what we call Middle English. Five hundred years after that saw Gutenberg's invention of the printing press and movable type, which ushered in Modern English and which we've already discussed. And now the Internet is changing things. What else is in store for the future of our language is something I would like to continue to explore.