As previously posted, I love all thing Olympics. NBC's Olympics' website has scrolling athlete tweets, which I now think is quite possibly the best thing ever.
Normally, I hate twitter and all that it stands for, mainly the degradation of the English language. (I had to drop my other argument that it makes people seem incredibly vain and self-absorbed because who cares what you had for lunch today or if you are getting in the shower right now when I started blogging.) Don't get me wrong, my favorite thing about English is its ability to change to fit the needs of its users, new words can be added, old words can get new meanings or new uses. I love it. What I don't love, however, is the direction that technology is pushing it--into a land where letters can be dropped, punctuation can be ignored, I can become i, all in the name of making it 140 characters or less.
So how, you ask, do I somehow manage to reconcile my hatred towards twitter and my desire to know everything that Apolo Ohno is thinking and doing in Vancouver? Simple, I'm reading the tweets on NBC's website not his twitter page. So, while I'm technically reading tweets, I'm not subscribing or even technically following him on twitter. (I did accidentally hit something that took me to Tanith Belbin's actual twitter page; I closed it out almost immediately.)
What does this have to do with computer class? Well, we had a quiz today. I spent about 15 minutes studying and felt pretty good about it. When I got to class, a bunch of the other students were freaking out about it. Now would be a good time to mention that my two friends and I are the youngest people in the class. There are a lot of people who are probably around my mom's age. I say that to say that, while I've basically grown up using a computer, a lot of people in my class haven't, so while I'm used to all these "computer words" we were being tested on, they aren't. Thanks to the English language's ability to take in tons of new technology words, words like RAM, gigabyte, and operating system are words I grew up hearing and are an accepted part of my vocabulary. I'm thankful for this. So I guess I need to learn to be thankful that, due to character restrictions on text messages and tweets, my students are growing up with "words" like txt, ur, and u. It is another example of how language adapts to time and culture.
I guess I should thank twitter for giving me another great example about functional shifts in language. But, I know me, and I know that's never going to happen (although I am glad I know the sun is shining in Vancouver).
I, too, used to oppose twitter with my life. But now I twit. Or is it tweet? I'll never know. I'm trying to convince Julianne to jump on the bandwagon. However, I think you should tweet. Because the art of tweeting (twittering? twitting?) is making a hilarious (meaningful, deep, etc) statement in correct English with no punctuation errors in less than 141 characters. Can't go over. Two tweets for the price of one is not as effective. I think you'd be quite good at it. DO IT :)
ReplyDeletePS so glad you're in computer class. I read your earlier posts at school, and was sad when I didn't have anything to read. Then I remembered it was Monday.
PPS if this was a tweet, I'd be over my limit.
PPSS TWITTER WANTS YOU.
I think the character limit would be too much for me. I need space to get to my point, and I don't really know if I could say anything profound in so small a space. I would have to resort to abbreviations and unconventional punctuation, which stresses me out. I have enough stress in my life--I don't need the added stress of trying to express myself in a confined and limited space. But perhaps blogging and the Olympics are my twitter gateway drugs....I doubt it, but it's possible.
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