Posted also to my WEBLOG at people.tribe.net/ronnyd
Don’t misinterpret that title. I don’t hate keeping an online journal. www.ronnyd.com/weblog is evidence of that. That site is not updated as often as I would like, but it’s there and it’s passed its two-year birthday.
I’ve cross-posted this there as not everyone who reads ronnyd.com is a tribe member (though they should be! (www.tribe.net will get you all started. Look for me under this sites email address (ronnyd at ronnyd dot com)).
For me, this need to create geek-speak for something that we happen to do on a computer is infuriating. Maybe it’s not geek-speak, but maybe it’s a hipster lingo. Eh, whatever it is, I don’t like it.
See, I fancy myself a bit of a word man, or least I romanticize myself that way. My vocabulary probably isn’t big enough, nor my grammar strong enough, for the romanticizing, so please just indulge me. I would like to write, be a writer, a scribe, an historian, an investigative journalist, or what have you. I know that I need to get out onto paper some of the really bad and awkward prose that’s lurking in my fingertips in order to get there. I’m working on it.
Back to the point of this post: Stop for a moment and consider the word ‘blog.’ Say it with me now: ‘blog.’ It’s pretty revolting when you say it out loud, isn’t it? Sounds more like you’ve puked up your guts after a night on the sauce that it does in describing the contents of or the act of writing your thoughts into your online journal for god-knows-who to see.
‘Blog.’ A lesson I learned when studying computer science is that programmers hate to type. The less typing one has to do in order to complete a task the better. If you can reduce your code to the smallest set of arguments and functions possible, and still accomplish your intended or assigned tasks, then you’ve hit paydirt. I think that this is the type of mentality that has permeated the online universe. LOL. BRB. TTYL. OMFG. We all know what these mean, don’t we? They’re shorthand, and they do save time when typing, chatting, and, um, journaling. There’s no argument from me there.
But.
Does our language suffer at the altar of expediency? Is this vast archive of thoughts, perceptions, hopes, memories, fears, anecdotes, and dreams, this online archive, going to be looked back on in revulsion because we chose to call this forum that we share in a ‘blog?’ Are our thoughts that we share any less sacred or true because we invent new words, even if born of the need for speed, to describe our online life.
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I’m just making much ado about nothing.
Should we care all that much? I think that you know my answer, but, yes, I think that we should. After all, when we express online, we’re nothing but black and white pixels on the screen. We have at our disposal this tool called language, and we have rules for using it. The more adept we become in using it, the more clearly our thoughts can pass from one to another. In becoming more adept in our use of language and all of its foible and beauties, there is less chance for miscommunication or misinterpretation of our thoughts or feelings. When used to its fullest power we can express and share more fully.
Maybe I’m just a conservative and hate change and growth. Nah, that’s not it. I still hate the word ‘blog,’ though.