The Dumbest Generation
The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future… I wish I had time to read this book (oh, the irony) by Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein. Reviewer David Pitt summarizes the central thesis of Bauerlein’s book (emphasis mine):
The immediacy and intimacy of social-networking sites have focused young people’s Internet use on themselves and their friends. The material they’re studying in school (such as the Civil War or The Great Gatsby) seems boring because it isn’t happening right this second and isn’t about them. They’re using the Internet not as a learning tool but as a communications tool: instant messaging, e-mail, chat, blogs. And the language of Internet communication, with its peculiar spelling, grammar, and punctuation, actually encourages illiteracy by making it socially acceptable.
I’ve always struggled with the abbreviations and slang of digital communication — on the one hand, I instinctively rebel against them because they strike me as a degeneration of the written word — a bastardization of convention. On the other hand, I understand the English language is constantly evolving and changing, and mutilation of existing words is a part of that. Despite this, I think of electronic abbreviations as more of a removal of nuance and etymology (“your” becomes “ur”) than a clever or useful evolution of existing words (e.g., neologisms from the 1940s: bikini, genocide, doublethink). It’s difficult to feel that we are moving forward.
Bookmarked for reading later.