Can U Read This?
Monday, September 18th, 2006In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman lamented the loss of our ability to read due to our over-exposure to television. His concern was that reading requires a linear logic that is essential to rational thinking and that television’s non-linear logic was training us to be silly, not serious thinkers.
Camille Paglia’s response, in a lovely Harper’s article featuring a dinner time conversation between her and Postman, was that television was much more like the real world than books. As she pointed out, you walk out of a building and a piano can fall on your head. Real life, she argues is non-linear and thus television prepares us better for it than books.
Similar to the Paglia-Postman debate is the current discussion over the effects instant messaging and text messaging is having on our ability to write. With limited space to write, quick back and forth communication, and (in the case of text messaging) a small keyboard, these new modes of communication encourage us to abbreviate words. “You” becomes “u” and “thank you” becomes “ty,” which generally get an “np” in response (“no problem”).
