Disposable Words

I like words. I've written or typed quite a few of them in my time. I relish the exercise of formulating a thought and laboring to fashion it in a manner that makes a concept accessible to others. I wrote poetry when I was young, Bible studies in my 20's, and a wide variety of technical and policy documentation throughout my career. I started blogging out of an innate need to write, for myself and anyone willing to suffer as my audience.

Creative writing was never really a focus during my student years. While I believe I am suitably proficient in the use of language and vocabulary, I find that the distinction between words as commodity and words as art to be a difficult chasm to span. It is for this reason and more that I find articles on the topic of the modern use of the English language so interesting. The digital age has greatly commoditized the written word, making it more and more difficult to identify true art in the preponderance of prose. In a fascinating article called "The Pros and Cons of Cyber-English," David Gelernter takes a look at some of the effects the digital age has had on the vernacular. A few excerpts:

Social networking, texting, email and digital messages have borrowed the keys to the English language and are joy-riding all over the landscape, smashing body panels and junking up the fancy interior. Many thoughtful people are worried. But it's good for English to get shaken up occasionally—by people who are using it in new ways, not by academics ordaining from on high.

In the 1980s and '90s, email saved the personal letter from extinction by moving it online. Email-writers have leaned heavily for decades on abbreviations, which suit this quick-and-casual medium. Thus the celebrated "lol," "laughing out loud," and many others.

…

When you are forced to compress your message into fewer words, each word works harder, carries more meaning on its shoulders and, accordingly, becomes more important and interesting. Digital English is no good for poetry or novels, but on balance it's refreshing.

Smiley-faces are another story. Painfully cute hieroglyphics (happy-face, sad-face) have littered email for years; they are the empty beer bottles in the literary flower garden. Anything that can't be pronounced stops the verbal music, makes the reader stumble and marks the writer as a nitwit. These pictograms are for sloppy and lazy writers: E.B. White never felt the need to draw little faces in the margin to make his meaning clear.

I confess that I have, at times, fallen into the habit of using emoticons (smiley-faces, etc.) as shorthand to convey everything from genuine emotion to simple acknowledgement in response to a message I've received. But in my regular writing, never. On to weightier matters (emphasis mine):

Digital words are disposable words. Partly the problem is technological; mostly it is psychological. Ink and paper (or parchment or papyrus) have functioned brilliantly as a presentation and storage medium for a couple of thousand years. It's easy to read a 300-year-old book or a 2,000-year-old scroll. Can you imagine booting a 2,000-year-old computer? For a technologist, "permanent" means the next 20 minutes.

Digital words are easy to write, change, send, forget. They lack the dignity of the printed word. It's hard to throw out a book, even if you don't need or want it; it's easy to delete a million bits without thinking twice. Young writers know that blogs are cutting-edge but want to see their pieces, nonetheless, in real ink on real paper in real books, newspapers or magazines.

Digital words seem cheap because they are, and they grow cheaper by the day. Consider the withering hailstorm of mail, text, social net and blog posts that assaults you the moment you go online. It's become impossible for many a normal, solid citizen to answer his email promptly. But young people seem increasingly apt to ignore uninteresting messages on purpose. If the message is important it will be resent, and if it isn't, who cares anyway? So the value of digital words sinks even lower.

Gelernter's piece is worth a read, so I'll resist citing even more of the article. The above section strikes me particularly keen. So much of our lives are wrapped up in digital mediums, more so than many of us might care to admit. After the tornado, we fretted about retrieving printed documents and papers, out of concern for identity theft and security. Books upon books were pulled out of the rubble, because they were tangible assets that could be retrieved, and perhaps more than a few no longer available in print. Yet we were also concerned about computers, tablets, PDAs and random hard drives, because of the immeasurable volume of information stored on such devices. Three weeks later, we are still not sure whether that data is recoverable, although in due time we will find out.

I consider myself fortunate that I have so much of my writing stored off in different places, including online. But in the blink of an eye, every word, every thought I have committed to digital media could disappear forever. It is almost enough to make me consider committing all of my writing to some sort of printed medium, if only as a safeguard. Yet as events have shown, there is no guarantee on even the printed word.

The truth be told, words have always been disposable. The printed word is no more permanent than the digital word - the only difference is the shelf-life and the nature of the vulnerability. A writer wishes to be read; no more, no less. Words are abundant, and therefore are commodities that have value only in the sense that when put together, they convey something of the author. Some words permeate the culture and give the appearance of immortality. But in the end, all words are temporary, no matter how masterful the formulation, no matter how wide the distribution. So perhaps the chasm between commodity and art is a wasted endeavor as a pursuit of its own aim. I will never become "known" for the things I write, but those who read what I write, they will come to know me.