Internet slang leaves writers lost in communication

In the Nov. 5 issue of “New York Times Sunday Book Review,” there is a fascinating essay about the impact of technology on the Japanese language. While we in the States bemoan the intrusion of Internet shorthand (“LOL,” “WTF,” “FML”) into the vernacular, the Japanese language, in some ways, faces extinction.

Today, Japanese people often resort to using English terms. The invention of phonetic typing programs, though certainly useful, has debilitated people to the extent that many can no longer write characters by hand. The rise of keitai shosetsu—cell phone novels—poses a threat to Japanese syntax. People are becoming more and more habituated to reading condensed sentences that fit on a cell phone screen, instead of the sweeping and digressive sentences characteristic of Japanese.

What I found most striking about the essay was technology’s effect on the way we process the world. I am sure that the preference for short bite-sized information is not limited to the Japanese. Case in point: blogs versus long-form journalism. Also, the fact that almost everyone I know uses Twitter. I fear a future when people think in 140 characters. I once tried to justify Twitter to myself with the suggestion that tweets are akin to the stream of consciousness narration of James Joyce or Virginia Woolf, but even they were not kept to a 140-character limit.

Earlier this year, I attended a talk with Philip Gourevitch, the now departing editor in chief of The Paris Review, in which he discussed society’s entrance into a new epistolary age of e-mail. For Gourevitch, e-mail has turned people’s brains into Swiss cheese, with each red Google Notifier alert boring another hole. My ability to concentrate has certainly suffered due to the Internet. I will check “Arts & Letters Daily” multiple times in one day even though the site is only updated, well, daily.

I have made concerted efforts to curb my Internet (ab)use. When I recounted my unsuccessful experiences with LeechBlock—an application that allows you to impose time limits for specified Web sites—and Freedom—another application that shuts down your wireless for a set amount of time—my friend rolled his eyes and asked, “Why don’t you just download some self control?” My immediate response—“Where can I find ‘self control?’—was a wake-up call. The solution was not more technology but a return to good ol’ self-control. Sure, I still frequently Gchat, but I have pared my Google Reader down to the bare necessities.

In addition to changing our mental operations, technology has also transformed human relationships. A recent David Brooks column in the New York Times details how cell phones, and texting in particular, have destroyed the romance in courtship. Given the ease of sexting multiple potential lovers in the span of 10 minutes, Brooks’ characterization of the modern bachelor, or bachelorette, as a “comparison shopper” is rather apt. Once upon a time, Petrarch wrote love sonnets for Laura, even though he knew she would never leave her husband. Today, people send out late night mass texts—e.g., “What r u up to right now?”—and bite at the first response.

Amidst this hubbub over how technology has ruined our lives and relationships, there are always counterexamples. A friend of mine is currently involved in what I dubbed an e-epistolary romance in the vein of 18th-century epistolary novels. My friend and her dreamboat exchanged 173 e-mails over a five day period and have now moved forward to Gchatting for hours. Without the immediacy of e-mail and Gchat, I doubt the friendship would have bloomed so easily. True, their e-mails seem crude compared to John Keats’ effusive letters to Fanny Brawne, but the sentiment is the same.

Coincidentally, I am currently reading Samuel Richardson’s massive epistolary tome, “Clarissa,” for a seminar of the same name. I can’t help but feel myself to be the Anna Howe to her Clarissa Harlowe, with the charming gentleman caller in the role of Mr. Lovelace. Hopefully their ending will be closer to the happy resolution some of Richardson’s fans clamored for than the terrible events that unfold in the book, and perhaps this correspondence will satisfy Terry Eagleton’s wish that “a modern Clarissa would not need to die.”

Lucy Tang is a Columbia College senior majoring in English. Sentimental Education runs alternating Wednesdays.