My laptop is quickly becoming the next find for electronic palaeontologists. I watch the television ads for all of the gizmos that the phone companies are promoting (hawking is more like it), coupled with Apple's promotion of iPad, iTouch, iPhone, iiiiiiiiiiiii is everywhere. I have never seen so many lower-case i's in the media in my life.
I am also struck my the way texting and Tweeting have overtaken the world, or so it seems. I am a texter, but not a Tweeter. Besides, texting is really a form of Tweeting, is it not? The people I text with all share the commonality of a strange, abbreviated dialogue that will someday probably become a language. Children's books will be much easier to write. Imagine the dialogue:
hi, devon. howr u? urcute. ib fine. whtr u up 2? gotta run. by4now.
There will be no upper case lettering because hitting the shift key with a thumb is simply too time-consuming. Shaving off letters and using single letters or numbers to represent words will take the place of formal, proper spelling. Spelling taught in schools? Forgeddaboudit. Cursive writing and keyboard typing? No one will know these skills were ever needed except in the faded, yellowed pages of antiquated textbooks. Textbooks? What were they?
Imagine the human, physical transformation that will take place. There is a song, from 1965, "Everyone's Gone To The Moon", by the Englishman Jonathan King. He wrote the line, "Arms that can only lift a spoon". I argue that our mutation will go far beyond that. We will truly be a race with thumbs only. The thumbs on future humanoids will be much smaller and thinner than present mankind's due to texting. Our phones will have become our computers and primary, if not only, methods of communication. The small keys necessary on these devices will necessitate physical mutations. Ever watch teens texting? I predict that these mutations may evolve by the end of the next generation. The world will be a strange mix of the 'next generation' that has arms with a single, thumb-like digit and the 'lost generation'.....those emerging from caves still possessing all four fingers AND a thumb.
i have 2 go. my fingers are shrinking and my thumbs r changing b4 my very is.
Ancora imparo
