The Dialectics of Type (Final DRAFT)
Writing has become increasingly tied down to speed, whether it is because of ease of use or psychological pressure due to some avenues of typing on QWERTY keyboard. It is for those who take full advantage of the new forms of writing the Internet age, they will find themselves perched upon a long and fragile tightrope hundreds of feet above the streets and if one moves too hastily they will fall down, far to far to survive. Two connotations comprise the verb “Typing” the struggle for those yearn to write on the Internet, one is conventional writing and is merely replacing paper with a word processor or a blog with an array of tools for enhancing and distributing ones writing. This connotation has streamlined the way the writing process and one’s ease of conveying opinions and thoughts. , the other much less pronounced connotation is the erosion of written language through the new speedy venues of writing (which did not exist before the computer) such as e-mail (Social Networking Messaging Included although it is more a hybrid of instant messaging and e-mailing), instant messaging, text messaging and twittering. The definition of this second type of typing is constantly being revised to encompass the widespread vandalism of centuries of rich advancement in the writing process.
Instant messaging is an subtle yet serious threat to the future development of the written and spoken word. It is the possible interlude to an Orwellian newspeak at a global scale. It erodes the barriers that separate casual and written word. With instant messaging people are writing more than they ever have, however this type of writing can be better characterized as speaking within the façade of writing. The idea behind instant messaging is you can send messages at will at the speed of light, so there is a certain pressure to type quickly, so as to not get submerged in the deluge of messages from your “buddies”, if you talk to quickly in too many directions, you will mix yourself up, this also occurs in the world of ims, where you could be berating someone and accidently im it to them and just like that apparatus you have relied on has pushed you off into the streets below. Speaking (and I must emphasize this as speaking as opposed to writing) to multiple friends using instant messaging increases the pressure to use increasingly shorter words and abbreviations. Punctuation is phased out of the equation entirely except to emphasize excitement or confusion. Terms such as lol, rofl and brb have entered the modern lexicon and sometimes leak out into the world of speech in oftentimes-sardonic witticisms that take nihilistic potshots at language conventions.
This does not even take into account the social alienation effect inherently infused with instant messaging, especially with the use of chat rooms. Rather than meeting several friends in reality where you can share a milkshake and/or experience, you meet online in these chat rooms that censor your faces with blurs typically given to the sexual predators in cop shows; then you are given a set of 16 emoticon masks to express yourself, as if human beings only had 16 different emotions. Sometimes I have found myself talking to a friend for 5 hours on this messaging service and can’t help but think “why didn’t I just meet her at some café in Park Slope”?
E-mail at least, is in the same phylum as conventional letter writing, there is some sense of formalism within it. Obviously there are exceptions like spam and chain letters, which merely aim to make you fantastically rich or laugh out loud and these are the rule in terms of sheer volume, but are often ignored which make them exceptions. However, I think the ability to save on postage and time with the emphasis in trying to clearly articulate what you want to say since you cannot exchange e-mails instantaneously to clarify something you said (at the very least it takes a minute) that led to confusion. E-mail also has the added benefit of saving all sent and received e-mails so you can easily go back and review when a business or personal dispute arises. With normal letters you typically won’t have a copy of what you sent (unless you typed it) and this could lead to confusion when you receive a response; especially if this response is belated.
Blogging on the other hand has completely reshaped how ones thinks in a manner that I think is beneficial. Rather than just reading the news or a story and musing carefully over it and possibly discussing it with a friend, I can with the use of blogging, write my opinion and commentary on social events, a book or even film I just finished ingesting. Blogging is the next logical step to take in the field of writing, the destination of this particular tightrope so to speak. It firstly has the ability to publish anyone’s writing for the every human being connected to the Internet to see. The rules of the game have changed entirely because of this development; we are merely at the beginning of the century of blogging. Writing will become ever more stream of consciousness since blogs tend to take on a more contemplative observer style and considering a great deal of serious bloggers are would-be writers, prose will begin to adopt many of bloggings nuances. Blogging actively converses with the more traditional venues of writing, it can be likened to a novelist being inspired by the visual style of a film, blogging is writing and so is traditional prose, but one has to imagine how varied writing is to fully comprehend the repricocity that exists between blogging and the other forms. The big draw of blogging is it’s speed, a simple press of the button gets your opinions out to others and you can constantly revise and go back to the old drafts even. You could add a contributor to your blog and two or even more people can work on fine tuning a single blog post. This doesn’t even have to be with friends, this could be across the globe with a Hungarian writer, and it is all done almost instantly if the will is there to move it forward. Blogging is a lot like filmmaking in so much that a great deal of media convergence is occurring, in fact blogging can be like filmmaking or even like breaking news reports on tv, more often than not the first people to break a story these days are bloggers (or twitterers).
Typing using online applications has sped up writing, for both good and bad. Some like instant messaging merely aim to set up a wall of facades, that conceal the crumbling world of letters, human relationships and time that do indeed exist. Others like blogging have sped up the spreading of information
