Published on 11th April 2008 by Adolph Reekie in Communication

One sports talk show host was asking the other day what the past tense of 'text' was. I wanted to call and tell him text isn't even a verb. But I guess it is now. If Marshall McLuhan was right, that the medium is the message, and I think he is, then what is the language of this new millennium? With I-pods and smart phones, text messages and wireless internet and digital video recorders and on and on, we've migrated into a virtual cyber-age of personal communication. If McLuhan's prophesy is true, that the media has become, in essence, the content, then how we communicate is now as important or more important than what we say and it's time to examine the paradigm a little further. I'm okay with all the new technology and even use quite a lot of it myself. I download, text, Tivo (another noun that's verbed), and do my best to eliminate spam although I'd rather be roaming around the desert or the forest trying to preserve that kind of pristine environment. Cyberspace will take care of itself and there don't seem to be any negative ions floating around as a result of some guy's shotgun email campaign. But is the sentence destined to die? Is the well constructed thought using paragraphs and clear direct language all but being herded off the range? Is it just sleek, chopped up text-speak, the equivalent of grunts and groans, that will dominate the culture when we all forget how to read and speak? What works for us is what is convenient, fast, accessible, and personal. The key is expediency. Casual communication has always hinged on what develops between two or more people who share common understandings and beliefs. Text messages and emails strip away that subtlety and give way to immediacy. We make do now without the raised eyebrow or the shrug to give the recipient that little nod that the comment is real, playful, pointed or sharp. That's why jokes so often fall flat on email and seem so obtrusive when they crash in from a friend during the day and seem so out of place. They are. Jokes require a setting, a setup, a mood, a place. Email has none. With an election coming up and the Olympics around the corner, every four years is an opportunity to witness the best and the worst of communication and performance, sometimes both at the same time. I'll be reading about the campaigns and evaluating content and message, style versus substance, and for me that means reading the newspaper and its deliberate, well constructed logic leading me through arguments and themes that will guide us through the American political process. Sound bites and video clips will help provide some clues about nuance as long as I can read about it in detail. The Olympics will showcase the world's greatest athletes and the world's greatest television coverage. Quality abounds with performances on the field, in the announcing booths and in the control rooms. The production quality is television at its best. For me there's no better way to see how television transforms live events into magical home theater than at the Olympics. I could watch every minute. You can't chop up a hundred meter dash into two second bites, and you better not turn swimming and diving events into snapshots. Give me the whole enchilada, slow it down, freeze it, but don't cut it up, please. I like it whole, unsalted, and pure. My theory on new media, is that no one media every really goes away, they just find new ways to develop and re-group and survive. No, not all movie theater complexes make it, and the telegraph did, indeed die. But all other modern electronic media is still around, and surviving quite well. Sure, newspapers are struggling and merging but the daily paper giving us local and national and international news in context is vital, and will survive. Television and radio and movies and movie rental shops keep going and going and going. So truncate that text, chop those punctuation marks if you like, and feel free to move about the language. Spanglish, text speak, it's all good. Just communicate. I hope that well constructed sentences will continue to speak to me, will continue to be written by the fine writers and word smiths, those that craft the language and make words so beautiful. Their media, is their language. Their messages are delivered and experienced one complete word after another. As long as I can have some of that I can handle just about any form of human communication, electronic or otherwise, smoke signals to megaphones to card sections at college football games. Just speak to me, just say something, and make it matter. Make it worth my while.

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